Transcription
AI, robots, driverless cars. In the development of future technology, there's one sometimes overlooked part of the equation. Electricity.
[music] Energy potentially becomes the bottleneck when it comes to how quickly [music] you can ramp up that industry. With the US and China racing for [music] tech supremacy, the power must stay on always.
>> The tolerance to power failure will go down to zero. >> Between China and the US, who's winning the electricity race and what will it mean for their tech ambitions? All >> [music] [music] >> right.
Sunian is an animation director based in Beijing, but these days he prefers to include the word AI or artificial intelligence in front of his title. And that's because [music] the tools he used have completely rewritten the rules of his craft. Tienway is among the 30 odd percent of the Chinese population who use generative AI regularly. That works out to over 500 [music] million people.
We're living through one of the biggest tech revolutions in history. From AI to robotics, drones, technology is reshaping everything we do. But as we usher in the future, there's an important piece we may overlook. Electricity.
[music] >> For example, per CG GBT search is.3 W hour. We light up an LED bulb for a few minutes or maybe running our computer for a few minutes, that's.3 W hour. Um that may seem small, but if you multiply that by billions of curies around the world, and that is where we will see a huge energy demand surge.
The more [music] advanced our tech becomes, the hungrier it gets for electricity. For example, just looking at data centers alone, their draw on electricity [music] is expected to double by 2030.
So, how is electricity generated? Traditionally, this happens in power stations. Here, fuel is burnt to create heat. That [music] heat turns water into steam. The steam spins turbines. And as those turbines whirl, magnets [music] rotate inside coils of wire, generating electricity [music] through electromagnetic induction.
the major kind of next generation of emergent industries that we're looking at. Of course, it's AI uh that's the major one. All of the data centers, all of the computing power that is needed to make that transition happen needs a lot of electricity, so much energy.
>> And why does any of this matter? because his country's battle for leadership in the technologies that will define the next century. Electricity, stable, abundant electricity is the foundation of that race. We do need to find the next wave of innovation in which this will carry the economy forward and improving productivity and also addressing the issue of rising labor cost then robotics AI could actually help us maintain [music] cost competitiveness. This is what countries need to drive the next wave of industrial development, the next wave of innovation and has also make our life more comfortable.
>> Therefore, energy potentially becomes the bottleneck when it comes to how quickly you can ramp up that industry.
Widespread adoption of AI could increase worker productivity anywhere from 13 to 40% according to various reports. A step that has already adopted in his animation [music] studio.
Right now, the United States and China are competing for dominance in future tech industries. The US leads in cloud computing [music] and AI chips. China controls the electric vehicle market and has surged ahead in factory automation. But when it comes to electrification, it appears China is the clear front runner. From producing just 1/3 the electricity of the US in 2000, by 2024, China was generating twice as much as the US. And [music] what's more impressive is how the transformation is taking place. While the initial spurt was driven by fossil fuels, this is changing.
In the last [music] year, coal was still about 55% of the generation mix. In 2025, it will drop a little bit again. It will probably be down [music] to about 53% of the power generation mix, which is still a lot. And then you talk about your clean energy source, wind, solar, right, hydropower. The total is about 32 33% last year. That should inch up a little bit this year. China's clean energy share is rising fast, faster than any other major economy.
One of the companies powering this clean energy surge is Envision, the world's largest wind turbine producer. Evation is a leading for smart win and we are the leading position from woodwire and we are number two for delivery last year about 14 gawatt of win turban to the market and also we get the order taken from globally number one last 3 years
>> in 2024 wind power [music] accounted for 10% % of China's total electricity generation. Solar power was 9%. And the country produces the majority of solar [music] panels and wind power equipment globally. We develop smart wind turbine with the AI together. So we have two big model. The first is the AI weather forecast model and second is the energy model together. so that we can understand when power will come and how to consume such a new energy with high value.
Across the country, new [music] lowcarbon sources are meeting much of China's growing electricity demand. >> The goal is to try to make sure as much of that as possible is met by generation from lowcarbon sources like wind, water, solar, and nuclear. And that has been happening increasingly. In 2024, around 85% of all of the new electricity consumption was met by lowcarbon sources.
But creating power is only part of the story. Electricity has to travel sometimes across [music] thousands of kilometers from where it's generated to the people and machines that need it. Electricity starts at [music] the power station, then shoots through high voltage transmission lines that crisscross the country. Near cities, the voltage is lowered in substations, so it's safe for everyday use, all monitored by control centers. This whole chain is collectively known as the electricity grid. The balance between supply and demand of electricity to absorb sudden changes without crashing is what experts call grid resilience.
Renewable energies are intermittent, right? I mean they depend on the weather conditions at that hour. So if you have a lot of solar radiation, a lot of sun, then you produce a lot of solar energy. And if let's say the wind is blowing hard, you also have a lot of wind. So with resilience in that grid [music] that means that no matter how much energy is being generated at any point uh across the grid the grid will be able to take it and distribute that energy efficiently without causing any blackouts or problems or power failures.
>> And in the world run by cloud computing drones and AI [music] powered robots a stable electricity grid is paramount. Say for example research student trying to run a simulation just in the middle of it there's a power outage. Well whatever you have been doing in the past few weeks maybe months all their work will be lost. So as much as countries wants to exponentially develop the technology they would also have to develop the energy systems. So that means modernizing your power grid making sure your energy sources are reliable.
Here, China has invested heavily in electrical infrastructure. In 2022, some 500 billion yen around 78 billion US was spent on grid buildout. In 2025, investment could [music] reach 91 billion US. By comparison, the US invested about 30 billion in 2024.
When you're looking at an emerging industry that needs a lot of electricity, can we absorb it right now with our current capacity or do we have the ability to quickly ramp up even more to meet the growing need? In China's case, the answer is unequivocally yes. [music] And the United States right now is really straining to figure out how are we going to meet the energy needs [music] of what we anticipate will be this massive, massive AI boom.
So, how did a once energy insecure China achieve this? Welcome to Shenzhen, China's hardware capital, where the future doesn't just get imagined, it gets demoed. At the China International High-Tech Achievements Fair, more than 500 exhibitors from over a 100 countries have gathered to showcase breakthroughs in AI, clean energy, and robotics. One such company is Micro Rootech, which is building intelligent mobility agents. Micro rootech and the other Chinese innovations being paraded at the fair [music] are examples of China's push towards what the government calls new productive forces.
>> [music] >> New productive forces is at its heart a political slogan. So in the past we were looking at heavy industry being very dominant. We're looking at coal and steel and traditional heavy industry uh segments. The new quality productive forces slogan signals an idea that we want to be having a more high-techdriven economy. Or you could say just more simply the type of industrial segments that rich and developed countries already are have expertise in and have capabilities in. Those are the ones that we want here.
New productive forces were [music] first introduced by Chinese President Cingping in 2023. It was emphasized [music] again in 2024 during the country's two sessions meeting as being a strategic driver of China's economic future. To realize this vision, China needs electricity.
Guiding China's development for the year 2026 to 2030 will be its 15th 5-year plan. These plans are medium-term and national development blueprints [music] that set the Communist Party's priorities for the economy, society, environment, energy, [music] and security over 5-year periods. Recommendations for the 15 to 5-year plan include promoting the safe, reliable, and orderly replacement of fossil [music] fuels and developing highquality clean energy.
However, China wasn't always energy [music] secure. In 2011, the country experienced a power supply [music] crunch with more than a dozen provinces experiencing rolling blackouts. Back then, 80% of electricity in China came from coal fired power stations. As China's factories operated at full capacity, coal prices surged. With [music] expensive coal, power stations reduced electricity output. This coupled with a hot summer that hit China's hydro power production caused rolling outages.
The 2011 power shortage prompted change, including a surge in constructing ultra high voltage transmission lines. Before 2010, China's energy policy was fragmented, split across various departments and ministries. So [music] the National Energy Commission was established in January of that year to coordinate and set out the national strategy. It is China's highest level decision-making body on energy. Between 2011 to 2015, Beijing set binding national energy targets and decided where large projects should be built.
That's In the 14th 5-year plan, there's [music] a target to raise renewables share of electricity consumption from around 29% in 2020 to 33% in 2025.
>> But for a place like China, coal fired power is really cheap. And if you give a data center operator their option to use the cheapest, [music] most stable electricity they can get, they might be inclined to select coal fired power. [music] Instead, building a new data center in many places throughout the country, they are mandated to use [music] at least 80% renewable electricity uh for their power source.
>> These plans didn't just change policy, they alter China's entire electricity landscape. In 2025, [music] China was the top investor in clean energy, accounting for almost 30% of total global investment. This was followed by the US at nearly 20%. In 2023, it added nearly 220 gawatt of solar capacity, more than the entire US solar fleet. China also controls over 80% of global solar manufacturing and produces 97% of the world's silicon wafers, the essential ingredient in solar panels.
With the growth in renewables, China plans to hit peak carbon emissions by 2030. >> That's the goal. And to meet that goal while not sacrificing growth, you have to be able to build massive scales of clean energy. Otherwise, you were just sacrificing your ability to to grow, right? So, that's that's the role that the renewables are able to play. They're allowing you to continue to use more electricity without uh asking for more from the already overdrawn carbon budget.
Apart from generation and transmission, there is another piece of the electricity puzzle that China has an advantage. Storage. While fossil fuelbased electricity [music] can be generated on demand, renewables are intermittent. When the sun shines, solar panels produce electricity regardless of demand. This means that the excess electricity generated must be stored for future use. [music] China controls more than 3/4 of global lithium ion battery production. Part of its dominance is due to the country [music] earmarking batteries as a priority sector since the 2000s.
Tyson Electronics is one of the first companies to [music] commercialize power banks. The company has now expanded from consumer [music] electronics to bigger things. for powered by the sun. These charging stations are part of a micro grid that Pyson is developing. Micro grids are self-contained systems that can generate, transmit, and store electricity independently of the main grid.
Since the 2011 energy crunch, China's industrial policy has dramatically expanded its electricity infrastructure as well as dominating critical sectors like renewables and storage. This gives it a decisive advantage in the future tech race. With China pushing ahead, with what will power future tech, is the US falling behind in the US,
The data center boom is seeing such facilities mushroom in many places. Even here in rural Virginia where Ariana Govoni Young lives. When they broke ground on these data centers, the first thing they did was knock down all these beautiful old trees. Once they knocked all the trees down, they started blasting and digging to make room for putting the data center. And now there's lights everywhere and there's cameras. And it's one of those things where it's just it's not that little piece of paradise that I bought into.
Data centers are the backbone of [music] the digital world. They store, process, and manage vast amounts of information essential for AI and cloud computing. And northern Virginia arguably has the highest concentration of data centers anywhere in the world. It's also home to 35% of all hypers scale data [music] centers. However, each of them requires electricity, a staggering amount of it.
When you look at the electric demands of data centers on the low end, they usually need maybe 100 megawatt. That's the size of a small city. [music] Hypers scale which is the massive many data centers in one projects [music] that are being planned and developed here in Virginia. So we talk about gigawatts. This is getting into the territory of a New York City in terms of these facilities.
In the last few years, demand and supply of electricity in the US have largely kept on par, both growing at around 1 to 2% each year. But this could soon change with demand outstripping supply. One study predicts that America's electricity consumption could rise by 25% over [music] the next 5 years. By 2050 that could balloon to 78% driven by technological demands.
>> What we have now is unprecedented growth in electricity [music] demand which in some counties of this country is actually in double digits per year in [music] percentages which we have not seen since 50s and 60s. So essentially the country and the electric power sector were captured by surprise in how much electricity we actually need. So we're going to need new huge high voltage uh transmission lines, lots of substations, distribution lines. In places where these data centers service, there's a massive need for new infrastructure.
Here, America's energy infrastructure could face challenges in meeting the ramp up in demand. More than 70% of transmission lines across the country are over 25 years old, putting some beyond design lifespans. [music] So, while China has modernized its grid, America's network is showing its age.
>> The American power grid, it's more than a century old. [music] So somewhere in early '90s we hit a level when we learned how to do things [music] using electricity quite efficiently and without a growth of electricity consumption [music] we simply did not need to have more capacity added to the grid and that's why attention of the industry shifted [music] to finding a way to produce the same amount of electricity more efficiently rather than to think how to produce more electricity.
China has built around 45,000 to 55,000 km of ultra high voltage lines which can move more than 1,000 kilovolts of electricity. The bulk of America's power lines have much lower carrying capacities around [music] 230 to 500 kilo volts. According to a May 2025 assessment by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the US power grid is approaching critical limits. The report warns that inadequate [music] capacity and transmission bottlenecks could trigger supply shortages during peak periods.
>> Think of it as highways. Think of reliability as where you can travel smoothly on a highway without bumps, sudden breaks and stops. And think of grid efficiency as everybody is able to travel at high speed without blockages, without traffic jams. So the same analogy apply to power grid. So if the highway is let's say a two-lane highway that's designed to accommodate only a 100 cars a day we have no problems. But now that number has been doubled, tripled, maybe 10 times 100 times more, there will be traffic jams.
>> So now American utility [music] firms are in a rush to play catchup. They've increased their spending by $5 billion to upgrade [music] transmission and $16 billion on distribution systems all in the last 5 years. Right now what we need [music] to do, we need to learn how to build this capacity very quickly because once again [music] we need this energy to remain competitive economically and to make sure this technology can help improve and protect our lives.
To meet the demand, the US is taking a different route from China. While China is scaling up renewables, America is turning to fossil fuels.
>> [music] >> With the shale gas revolution, the US is now the world's top producer of natural gas making America energy independent.
>> Right now, US is blessed with sufficient amount of fossil fuel. But going for longer term, then there becomes a question mark, [music] right? How do you really secure affordable fossil fuel in the next 10, 20, 30 years?
For now, securing fuel means opening more federal land for oil and gas exploration, which the Trump administration has done. The government has also sped up approvals for drilling permits. And in September 2025, the US Department of Energy announced a $625 million US investment to extend the lifespan [music] of aging coal and gas fired power plants. name. It's really about the speed and the scale. You build one gas generators and you instantly get hundreds of megawatts of power which are ready to go. When you talk about solar power plants, that would require a lot of land and it takes time to integrate it.
Consequently, momentum for renewables has slowed. President Trump with his adversarial position on climate change and renewables has canled offshore wind leases and reversed incentives for solar developers.
>> This whole climate change debate is not just about US and US as a country alone. It is how the world sees us as a leadership [music] in climate change mitigation and now with the Trump administration all that are gone.
>> So all of these countries are working so hard on the carbon footprint which is nonsense by the way >> due to the changes in the federal policy manufacturers need to adjust to make sure that they are capable of producing generation technologies which are being favored right now. If all of a sudden our country decides that we're back on track with solar and wind and we want to build this technologies, it's [music] going to take industry some time to bring the talent to work on this technology. If we pivot to fossil fuels right now, we will address short-term need in electricity, but we [music] will risk locking in the country into fossil fire generations for decades to come. And that's going to create problems down the road.
In Virginia, the return to fossil fu to feed the power hungry data centers [music] has an impact on the local community. Brennan Gilmore leads a group advocating for clean energy in the state.
>> Virginia was on the path towards [music] a fossil-free future. In 2000, the legislature passed a landmark act called the Virginia Clean Economy Act that set out the staged uh closing of gas plants and coal plants throughout Virginia. In response to data center demand, Dominion Energy, our largest utility monopoly in Virginia, has essentially broken that pledge to not build out gas and instead put forward new planning documents that said they're going to build six new natural [music] gas plants. We shouldn't be relying on fossil fuel plants. We have an existential threat with climate change and even apart from climate change, these fossil fuel plants are extraordinarily expensive way to produce electricity and they have local pollution impacts.
In any case, it will take years for these new plants to come online, leaving locals to compete with the technology giants for the limited supply of electricity. So last summer, Gainesville [music] started having blackouts and at first I thought maybe it was because of how hot it is, but because it continued happening and then talking to people who live near data centers, they're saying, "No, this is normal. This this happens because there's not enough power to take care of everything."
So [music] the US and China are locked in a fierce battle for tech supremacy and are adopting different strategies for electrification. How would this shape the tech race?
China may be known as the world's factory, [music] but walk into this one and you might be surprised by how quiet it is. That's because the workers aren't people, they're robots. And there are a lot of them. [music] At Gree's Smart Factory in Chuhai, robotic arms glide in perfect coordination, assembling air conditioners from start to finish. A new unit rolls off the line every 15 seconds.
>> [music] >> China has more robots working in factories than the rest of the world combined. In 2024, factories in China installed nearly 300,000 new robots. The rest of the world around 250,000. Manufacturing in China is predicted to grow 10% annually till 2028 and with it its electricity needs. In the next 5 years, China's electricity demand is set to grow annually by four to 5%. This translates to roughly 2,500 terowatt hours, about the same amount the entire European Union uses in a year.
>> [music] >> And so to supplement its renewable energy push, China has invested billions in another energy source, nuclear. Yeah, >> China's got uh fairly aggressive nuclear plans in the global context uh [music] to build nuclear that the scale they're looking at something like 10 gawatt a year roughly every year for the next foreseeable future. Now that's still relatively small in the context of [music] China's massive electricity industry. Uh but it's larger than the ambitions of any other country in the world right now.
>> [music] >> Nuclear reactors generate electricity through a process called nuclear fision. Atoms of radioactive fizzle elements like uranium are split to release heat which boils water into steam that drives turbines connected [music] to generators. China currently has 28 nuclear reactors under construction, nearly half of the global total. The US is also investing in nuclear technology, committing [music] $80 billion US to new nuclear plants. However, progress is slow compared to [music] China.
>> In the past 15 years, we only built two such nuclear reactors. So this difference between the number of data centers that are being built and the number of nuclear reactors that were built in the United States should give you an idea what is an energy gap we are facing. [music] By 2030, China is expected to overtake the US as the world's [music] largest producer of nuclear energy. Even more striking, China is almost self-sufficient in this field. uh there was a very strong push throughout the entire industry backed by the government [music] implemented by the major S so ses and supported by the entire supply chain to indigenize all the different aspects [music] all the different equipment all the different technology that go into a nuclear power plant. If we can't make it domestically yet we need to [music] put a specific research project associated with learning how to do it and developing it so we can push it forward domestically.
Nuclear power has an important role in the renewable energy chain. Nuclear reactors do not emit carbon and their power output can be ramped up or down as needed. Thus, it serves as a reliable supplement for times when renewable [music] power is intermittent. For example, when there's no sun or wind. Nuclear. [music] Having even just a bit of nuclear in the mix helps stabilize everything else. So even if it's only 15% of the generation, that 15% eventually allowed the whole rest of the grid to be more stable while still reaching that zerocarbon or lowcarbon energy mix that you're hoping for.
From January to October this year, China fouled over 670 nuclear related patents compared to about 320 for the US, which illustrates one more area which gives China the advantage in the electrification race. Heavy investment in research, all at a time when the Trump administration is cutting R&D funding. for example, proposing a 57% cut to the National Science Foundation's budget, [music] which will target clean energy and climate change research. All of China's top uh science and technology uh engineering schools, STEM schools, uh have massive programs focused on the energy transition, focused on the engineering that is necessary to make this [music] energy transition work. The research and development space inside China is driven by both the universities [music] and the research institutes of all of these major well-funded usually stateowned enterprises. Fore. [music]
But even with the massive push for nuclear and renewables, China is still a [music] net energy importer. Here is its weakness. visav the US. >> I think from a perspective of energy security, China is still importing a lot of oil. China is also trying to import gas. China is ramping up nuclear really fast. But compared to the amount of coal installed capacity, nuclear capacity is really just a fraction of it. Same as renewable. And so China will continue to have this energy security issues the country needs to address.
In the end, what does all this mean for the global tech war? While headlines often discuss who invents the best chip, trains the most complex AI model, or makes the smartest robots, none of that matters unless you can power them. talk about industrial industry 4.0 in which anything and everything is connected all the way from the factory shop floors [music] to our vehicles. This is where we can no longer afford any in any circumstances a power failure because imagine you know fleet of cars is traveling at high speed [music] on the highway and these cars are self-drive vehicles. If you have a power failure somehow one of the data centers and that is [music] that is monitoring those vehicles you're going to have a catastrophic accident on the highway. So this is where you know uh the tolerance to power failure will go down to zero almost zero.
Of course in the real world there are many other determinants of technology races. [music] We talk about uh human capital and funding and in this in the case of AI the availability of of chips. But if the only determinant [music] were the availability and cost of energy, uh, China will be winning that race.
>> There is a lot of talk about America not being able to [music] produce enough electricity to maintain its economic competitiveness in the world of AI. I think that such [music] risk exists on very short time scale. But in the long term, I fundamentally believe that America is capable of addressing those [music] issues. This we have so much creativity and technical talent in the country that can be put to solving these issues which coupled with our enormously vibrant private sector [music] can deliver on what we need.