A 500-kilovolt electrical substation in Xiongan New Area, Hebei Province, on September 5, 2024 (XINHUA)

On a snowy mountain, at an altitude of 4,600 meters in Sichuan Province, photovoltaic (PV) panels and a hydropower plant are coupled by transmission lines to jointly generate power, enabled by intelligent technology from Chinese tech company Huawei. The hydro-solar hybrid power plant was connected to the grid in June 2023, with a total installed capacity of 1 gigawatt. It has an annual energy yield of 2 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh).

Huawei's intelligent grid connection solutions and AI have helped improve reliability of transmission and increase power supply during peak hours in the summer when demand is high.

At the 2025 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference, held in Beijing from March 27 to 31, Chen Weimin, an independent consultant to Huawei's oil, gas and mining business unit, said Huawei is integrating digital and energy technologies to assist its partners in low-carbon transformation.

Huawei's intelligent solutions have been applied in PV energy storage, electric vehicle charging stations, industrial zones and data centers to help cut carbon emissions, and enhance efficiency and safety, according to Chen.

New technologies are reducing the carbon footprints of traditionally energy-intensive industries. Diane Anne Vorsatz, Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the forum, continuing that multiple emerging options will help achieve close to net zero emissions from greenhouse gas-intensive industries like steel, plastics and cement by 2050.

Green driver 

Many of the attendees to a sub-forum on carbon peaking and neutrality technology said they believe the application of AI will improve the efficiency of energy use and accelerate low-carbon development.

The roles of AI in addressing climate change include improving grid resilience, enabling smarter decision-making for decarbonizing industries, reducing waste, discovering new materials and green solvents, and building smart cities, Raffaella Ocone, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), told the forum.

"AI, a pervasive technology, will be central to the energy transition," she said.

Ding Chibiao, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), also stressed that new technologies like AI have enhanced the efficiency of the chemical industry and promoted energy conservation and emission reduction. AI-assisted low-carbon energy development calls for interdisciplinary and cross-field cooperation.

The widespread use of new technologies for low-carbon growth gives strong impetus to accomplishing China's goals of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, he said.

Ye Mao, a research fellow at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the CAS and head of the intelligent chemical engineering large model team, said AI models are increasingly used by domestic chemical companies.

In March 2024, Ye's team launched a chemical engineering AI model for chemical production, which helped shorten the duration of pilot tests, and cut production costs and energy consumption. In late November, the team further introduced a 2.0 version.

"The upgraded model shows great improvements in industrial catalysis and chemical safety and it covers a broader range of chemical application scenarios, compared with the previous one," Ye said.

But Ye also noted that collaboration between human engineers and AI models will continue for a period of time before an intelligent chemical system is built.

Vision to reality 

New technologies are becoming a tool for building low-carbon cities. A team of researchers from the CAS Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) is leveraging AI to create precise carbon emission maps of major cities, one of which is Shenzhen in Guangdong Province.

The team collects street data on carbon emissions through panoramic cameras on vehicles. The information is then transmitted to a laboratory at AIR in Beijing, where it trains a deep learning algorithm to analyze emission patterns.

The AI model can identify and differentiate between carbon sources such as vehicles and buildings and carbon sinks like vegetation in real-world urban environments. It calculates the net carbon emissions of the sources and provides detailed estimates, enabling targeted control and reduction measures.

So far, the team has completed 650 km of drive-around surveys in Shenzhen, gathering over 100,000 high-resolution street images and traffic emission records.

After extensive training, the tool can now generate high-definition carbon emission maps with a 100-meter resolution, achieving an accuracy rate of over 92 percent for road traffic emissions, the team said.

Challenges ahead 

According to forum participants, the application of new technologies paints an optimistic vision for low-carbon growth, but challenges remain in realizing this potential.

"Technologies exist to take all industry sectors to low or zero emissions, but it requires five to 15 years of intensive innovation, commercialization and policy support to ensure uptake," Vorsatz said.

The use of AI also brings challenges for carbon emissions reduction, as it requires vast amounts of energy to power data centers, and use servers and equipment.

Yang Yougui, Senior Vice President of Huawei, said at the 2025 Mobile World Congress in March that the total carbon emissions of the telecom industry reached 600 million tons in 2022, accounting for 2 percent of the global total. In the journey to carbon neutrality, telecom operators are facing major challenges including increased emissions, high energy consumption and rising energy costs.

A green computing power index white paper released in June 2024 by energy group Envision, green data solution provider Hoyinn and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology projected that China's data centers will consume more than 400 billion kwh of electricity by 2030.

If there is no substantial increase in renewable energy usage, carbon emissions from the facilities could surpass 200 million metric tons by that time, it warned.

Major tech companies in China have been launching smart solutions to secure low-carbon operation themselves. Alibaba has been engaged in green power trading, built PV systems and signed long-term clean power purchase agreements in recent years. It aims to achieve carbon neutrality in its own operation by 2030.

Wang Chaoyang, General Manager of Alibaba's Global Data Centers, said at a conference on environmental, social and governance issues of the company last July that Alibaba has used AI to adjust energy consumption of its data centers. In Zhangbei County, Hebei Province in north China, the company's data center recovers excess heat generated by IT equipment and cooling systems for use in residential and industrial buildings in winter to reduce coal use.

While the use of AI is still energy-consuming, there will be a turning point for the technology, after which it will help generate more energy while also cutting more carbon emissions as its application expands, Wang said. BR

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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