From ESS News
China’s leading cloud and internet companies are making a strategic push into energy infrastructure, particularly large-scale energy storage, to cope with the surging power needs of generative AI workloads and meet government green electricity mandates. Policy requirements have made “clean data centers” a central priority: by end-2025, newly built national hub data centers are mandated to use at least 80% renewable power. At the same time, energy forecasts and industry research suggest that AI expansion could multiply data center electricity demand tenfold compared to 2022 levels, fueling demand for accompanying storage systems.
Alibaba has committed to combining renewable generation and storage systems to back its AI ambitions. At its 2025 Apsara Conference, the company unveiled a CNY 380 billion ($53 billion) investment plan in cloud and AI infrastructure over three years. As part of this, Alibaba is advancing “solar + storage” deployment in multiple locations. For example, in Zhangjiakou it has partnered with Mingyang to develop a source-grid-load-storage integration project: 200 MW of wind, paired with a 40 MW / 160 MWh electrochemical storage system. Its Hangzhou data center already hosts a 50 MWh liquid flow battery system to buffer intermittent renewables and secure power stability.
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