China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, has introduced new energy-efficiency guidelines, requiring that “the proportion of green electricity consumption in new data centres in national hub nodes to be further increased on the basis of 80%” (https://www.ndrc.gov.cn/xxgk/zcfb/tz/202503/t20250318_1396627_ext.html). These guidelines build on previous 2024 State Council policy that the average power usage effectiveness of data centres must be lowered to less than 1.5 by 2025. It is reported that, while the guidelines are focused on data centres, if these new regulations are strictly enforced, Chinese data centres would be pushed into procuring locally-produced efficiency-compliant alternatives to Nvidia’s AI chips (e.g. Nvidia’s H20 chips in their current form are apparently not compliant with local environmental requirements), which could potentially lock out Nvidia’s chip products from the Chinese data centre market.
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