Alternatively the crisis can be used to accelerate right development - quickly build up solar farms and transmission lines. Both of these can be done quickly if there were a political will. Yet, that will is missing.
32.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacity, down 18% from last year.
11 GW of wind power capacity, up 19% from last year.
20 GW of thermal power capacity, up 414% from last year.
1.2 GW of hydro power capacity, down 36% from last year.
1.2 GW of nuclear power capacity. "
Yeah and the richest person on the planet with full vertical integration (with partner) Elon musk and Tesla aka solar roof and power wall wants to sell DC in space and hasn't fixed any use of gas turbine for Colossus 1&2.
Without enforcement it will happen continuously with snail pace
I like how balanced their energy mix is. It is very obvious that China is optimizing for capacity and availability. There isn't really a push for clean energy sources for political, or climate, reasons. They are deployed when it makes sense, backed up by robust coal and nuclear sources.
In Europe, we approach energy generation as a political, or climate problem. We are building solar and wind power sources, not to make energy cheaper, or to make grid more resilient, but to fulfill an ideological goal.
The results are, not great, to be honest. The energy prices have increased substantially, and are now driving our chemical industry bankrupt.
Edit: I do not dispute the climate change. I am only highlighting impacts of current policy.
I'm hoping the kind of gas turbines being installed on these datacenters are capable of quickly responding to a load change, meaning the primary source of energy could be solar during the day and complement when there isn't enough energy.
But I haven't looked into where these datacenter are being placed, I'm assuming that although solar is cheap now, the surface needed would make the purchase of nearby land probably not worth it. These new categories of datacenters are becoming very energy dense...
you're just incorrect. You probably missed 2 points :
- battery storage
- and in the article
"However, AI labs and some hyperscalers have relaxed those requirements as there is now a lower uptime tolerance applied to both inference and training, not just training. Many of Meta’s self-built AI datacenters, for example, target just two nines of uptime and forgo backup generators entirely, as detailed in our Industrials Model."
And especially terrible for the communities that have to live with gas turbines or other local power generators as neighbors. Noise and air pollution constantly [1].
But fuck them, they are poor people so we don't care about them /s .
Additionally, people against data centers are accused of being paid by China [2]
So, we're talking 40GW. Lets see what China does:
https://energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-tre...
"In the first two months of 2026, China added:
32.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacity, down 18% from last year. 11 GW of wind power capacity, up 19% from last year. 20 GW of thermal power capacity, up 414% from last year. 1.2 GW of hydro power capacity, down 36% from last year. 1.2 GW of nuclear power capacity. "
Without enforcement it will happen continuously with snail pace
In Europe, we approach energy generation as a political, or climate problem. We are building solar and wind power sources, not to make energy cheaper, or to make grid more resilient, but to fulfill an ideological goal.
The results are, not great, to be honest. The energy prices have increased substantially, and are now driving our chemical industry bankrupt.
Edit: I do not dispute the climate change. I am only highlighting impacts of current policy.
But I haven't looked into where these datacenter are being placed, I'm assuming that although solar is cheap now, the surface needed would make the purchase of nearby land probably not worth it. These new categories of datacenters are becoming very energy dense...
- battery storage
- and in the article
"However, AI labs and some hyperscalers have relaxed those requirements as there is now a lower uptime tolerance applied to both inference and training, not just training. Many of Meta’s self-built AI datacenters, for example, target just two nines of uptime and forgo backup generators entirely, as detailed in our Industrials Model."
But fuck them, they are poor people so we don't care about them /s .
Additionally, people against data centers are accused of being paid by China [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-mus... [2] https://fortune.com/2026/06/10/kevin-oleary-trump-administra...