From Gigabytes to Gigatons: China’s Data Centers and Their Carbon Footprint from 2006 to 2050

There has been a rapid growth of data-intensive activities in cloud computing and, more recently, training AI tools (e.g., LLMs), resulting in large increases in electricity demand and carbon emissions. Moving beyond high-level national estimates, here we compile a spatially explicit inventory of Chinese data centers and integrate this within the national electricity generation and transmission network. We find that data-center electricity consumption increased from 5.4 TWh to 157.4 TWh during 2006-2023, mostly in East China. Carbon emissions increased from 4.1 MtCO2 to 96.3 MtCO2 with cumulative emissions of 812 MtCO2. We find that transmission improvements avoided 65.9 MtCO2 of potential emissions over this period. Under our future scenarios, cumulative emissions reach 3.2 GtCO2 (1.4-7.9 GtCO2) between 2024 and 2050 while planned transmission avoids 190-1335 MtCO2. This work provides high-resolution insights into where energy system and data center interventions can be targeted.