On February 16, 2022, the national development and Reform Commission and other four departments jointly issued a notice, agreeing to start the construction of National Computing hub nodes in 8 places, including Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao, Dawan District, Chengdu and Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu and Ningxia, and planned 10 national data center clusters. The overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system was completed, and the project of “counting from the east to the west” was officially launched.
“Counting from the east to the west” was officially launched to strengthen the linkage of energy layout between the East and the West. The construction of China’s data center is advancing rapidly, reaching 4.286 million standard racks in 2020, with cagr4 = 36.35%. The national development and Reform Commission predicts that the annual computing power demand will still grow rapidly at the rate of 20% +. The energy consumption of the data center is high. More than 60% of China’s data centers are distributed in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and its surrounding areas, while the western region is rich in land and renewable energy resources, which has the potential to develop the data center and undertake the computing power demand in the East. Based on this, “counting from the east to the west” was officially launched to orderly guide the computing power demand in the east to the west, and optimize the regional layout of the data center. Among them, the western data center is responsible for dealing with businesses with low network requirements such as background processing and storage equipment, and the eastern hub deals with businesses with high network requirements such as industrial interconnection, financial securities and artificial intelligence.
Significantly increase the proportion of renewable energy use and help the “electric tiger” data center reduce carbon and emissions. The data center is an “electric tiger”. From a macro perspective, the total power consumption of China’s data center accounted for 2.35% of the total power consumption of the whole society and 14.9% of the power consumption of the tertiary industry in 2018. From a micro perspective, the power cost of the data center accounted for 56.7% of its operating cost. In 2018, the proportion of thermal power consumption in China’s data center was as high as 73%, which directly led to environmental pollution, including 98.55 million tons of carbon dioxide and 23400 tons of sulfur dioxide. It is estimated that if the proportion of renewable energy use in the data center industry is increased to 30% in 2023, the carbon dioxide emission will be reduced by 15.83 million tons, accounting for 16% in 2018. As early as the beginning of 2022, the policy side has clearly proposed to increase the proportion of renewable energy use in data centers and encourage them to participate in green power transactions.
Increase the proportion of green energy consumption in Western China and reduce the power consumption cost of data center. Under the requirements of double carbon target, data center, as a major energy consumer, is urgent to reduce emission and cost. The “East data West calculation” project also clearly requires that the pue (total power consumption of data center / power consumption of IT equipment) of cluster power supply of each data center shall not be higher than 1.25. The average pue of China’s super large data centers in 2019 was 1.46, which still has room for improvement. The important measure to reduce the energy consumption of the data center is to reduce the energy consumption of refrigeration equipment by 40%. For the western region, the temperature is lower than that in the East. Strengthening the layout of the data center in the West will help to improve the proportion of green energy consumption in the West and reduce the energy consumption level of the data center. For example, Huawei cloud data center located in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia (the annual average temperature is only 4.3 ℃), under the condition of full load operation, the pue of the data center can be as low as 1.12, which is expected to save 1.01 billion kwh of electricity and 810000 tons of carbon emissions every year.
It is estimated that the total energy consumption of China’s data centers will reach 919.4 billion kwh in 2025, accounting for 11.1% of the power consumption of the whole society in 2021. Assuming that from 2020 to 2025, the growth rate of the number of standard racks of data centers is equal to that of computing power, both of which are 20%, the number of standard racks of data centers in China will reach 10.665 million in 2025, and the total energy consumption will reach 919.4 billion kwh, accounting for 11.1% of the power consumption of the whole society in 2021 and 94.0% of the total wind power and photovoltaic power generation in China in 2021. Driven by the project of “counting from the east to the west”, the construction of data center will greatly increase the demand for green energy; If China’s data centers are set up in the West during the 14th Five Year Plan period, the consumption level of green energy in the West will be greatly improved.
Investment suggestion: as a major energy consumer, the data center is expected to significantly increase the proportion of renewable energy use, increase the proportion of green energy consumption in the West and significantly reduce the energy consumption level of the data center under the background of double carbon. In terms of individual stocks, Huaneng Power International Inc(600011) , China Three Gorges Renewables (Group) Co.Ltd(600905) are recommended, and it is recommended to pay attention to Huadian Power International Corporation Limited(600027) , Shanghai Electric Power Co.Ltd(600021) , Fujian Funeng Co.Ltd(600483) , China Resources Power, Guangzhou Development Group Incorporated(600098) , Guangdong Electric Power Development Co.Ltd(000539) , Shenergy Company Limited(600642) which are expected to improve profits; Longyuan Power, Tianjin Guangyu Development Co.Ltd(000537) , Jilin Electric Power Co.Ltd(000875) , Nyocor Co.Ltd(600821) , China Yangtze Power Co.Ltd(600900) , Cecep Wind-Power Corporation(601016) , Cecep Solar Energy Co.Ltd(000591) , Zhongmin Energy Co.Ltd(600163) , CGN new energy, the high-quality target of green power; The target of nuclear power operation leader China National Nuclear Power Co.Ltd(601985) ; Distributed photovoltaic field Jinko Power Technology Co.Ltd(601778) , Zhejiang Chint Electrics Co.Ltd(601877) , Jiangsu Linyang Energy Co.Ltd(601222) , Ganghua gas, Skyworth Group, Zhejiang Sunoren Solar Technology Co.Ltd(603105) , Hangzhou Star Shuaier Electric Appliance Co.Ltd(002860) .
Risk tip: focus on the risk that the company’s performance improvement is not as expected, the continuous rise of coal price, the decline of electricity price, the demand for electricity is not as expected, and the risk of policy change.
