BEIJING, March 26 (Xinhua) -- China has unveiled in its five-year roadmap a plan to promote the secure, reliable and orderly substitution of fossil fuels with non-fossil energy sources.

Spotlighted by Nature magazine among its "feel-good science stories to restore your faith in 2025," the country's clean energy initiative is gaining heightened strategic relevance as the Persian Gulf tensions put global oil supply under pressure.

Beyond cushioning against geopolitical risks, such a green ambition further anchors China's pledges to emissions peaking and carbon neutrality.

DOUBLING DOWN

In the recently adopted outline of China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), an illustrative map of clean energy base layouts shows arrows channeling wind, solar and hydropower from the country's west and nuclear energy from its eastern coast into the electricity-intensive economic zones.

This system, dubbed the new-type energy infrastructure, is engineered to support a bold target of doubling the nation's non-fossil fuel capacity, power generation and energy consumption by 2035, in a bid to drive sustainable, low-carbon growth for the world's manufacturing powerhouse.

Emerging technologies such as green hydrogen, concentrated solar power, and geothermal energy have also been folded into the five-year blueprint, alongside next-generation energy storage solutions. This year's government work report has listed "future energy" as a leading sector among China's industries of the future.

China's big bet on non-fossil energy, dismissed by some as oversupply, is now gaining wider recognition, especially as the relentless expansion of global AI data centers threatens to trigger power shortages, positioning its clean energy push as a potential game-changer.

A February report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) said global electricity demand is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent over the 2026-2030 period.

That same month, a commercial underwater data center project powered by an offshore wind farm began operations in Shanghai, a showcase of "compute-electricity synergy," the infrastructure project China is promoting this year to align computing power with renewable energy supply.

The offshore wind turbines towering above the data center deliver power to this "energy-hungry neighbor," enabling on-site consumption that sidesteps the transmission losses typical of conventional long-distance grid delivery. At full 24-megawatt capacity, the annual carbon dioxide reduction equates to the yearly absorption of roughly 1.6 million trees.

Similar clean-energy-powered data centers are being built in northwest and southwest China, among other regions.

"HALO" EFFECT

In a March blog post, Nvidia's Jensen Huang described the AI industry as a "5-Layer Cake," with energy serving as the foundational layer and the "binding constraint on how much intelligence can be generated."

China's strength in the energy sector stems precisely from its rapidly expanding clean energy infrastructure. Last year, the country's installed new energy generation capacity surpassed coal-fired power, cementing its position as home to the world's largest renewable energy system.

In late February, Goldman Sachs Research released a report titled "The HALO effect: Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence in the AI era," coining the new concept HALO that has quickly gained traction among global investors.

The firm highlighted that energy systems, supply chains, infrastructure and national security capabilities are "no longer treated as peripheral assets," but "have become strategic and scarce, and increasingly priced as such," given their high barriers to replication and economic relevance that persists across technological cycles, according to the report.

The latest data shows that China's AI large model API calls have surpassed those of the United States, partly driven by more cost-effective computing power supported by clean electricity. Clearly, the country's clean energy and supporting grid infrastructure are widely recognized as increasingly prominent HALO assets.

At the China Development Forum 2026 concluded on Monday, Liu Liehong, head of the National Data Administration, announced that green electricity will account for over 80 percent of the power consumption at newly built computing facilities in national hub nodes.

"With renewables like wind and solar plus ultra-high-voltage grids expanding rapidly, a national clean energy network tailored for AI computing infrastructure is expected to take shape within 15 years," said Zhong Zhangdui, professor at Beijing Jiaotong University.

GREEN PUSH

While highlighting the importance of diversifying national energy sources, China's green energy pivot fundamentally signals its determination to deliver on carbon reduction pledges.

Last September, China pledged that by 2035, it would reduce economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by 7 to 10 percent from peak levels, or even more. To hit the target, the country is poised to accelerate the green transition across the board and cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by a total of 17 percent in the 2026-2030 period.

China's clean energy dominance has also driven global emissions cuts. Addressing climate change signals a massive worldwide market for new energy products, with many fuel-importing nations "leaning towards renewables and efficiency as solutions," according to IEA's World Energy Outlook 2025.

The numbers tell the story. China has ranked first globally in new energy vehicle production and sales for 11 consecutive years, and it produces 80 percent of the world's solar cells and 70 percent of both wind turbines and lithium batteries.

Early this month, a Panama-flagged cargo vessel loaded with 153 wind turbine blades departed from the port of Qidong, a coastal city in China, setting a new record for the largest single-shipment export of wind turbine blades from the country.

In response to concerns about overcapacity in China's clean energy products, a Ministry of Commerce spokesperson pushed back this month, arguing that both production and consumption are inherently global, requiring supply-demand balance and adjustment from an international perspective.

"At the scale and pace that China is producing them, plenty of things stand to be swept away -- including, quite possibly, the once seemingly intractable problems of energy poverty and fossil-fuel dependence," wrote Jeremy Wallace, a professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins, in a recent column for Wired magazine.