Tianfeng Securities·2025-09-08 02:49Industry Rating - The report maintains an "Outperform" rating for the public utility sector [1] Core Insights - The data center industry in China is expected to reach a market size of 304.8 billion yuan and over 10 million standard racks by 2024, both achieving a year-on-year growth of over 20% [2][25] - The emergence of AI technologies, particularly large models, is driving significant demand for computing power, which is expected to enhance the growth of data centers [3][65] - The increasing electricity demand from data centers is projected to lead to a transformation towards greener computing solutions [4][111] Summary by Sections 1. Progress of China's Data Center Industry - The development of China's data center industry has evolved through four stages, with computing power becoming the driving force in the digital economy since 2020 [9][18] - The market is characterized by a significant regional distribution, with the "East Data West Computing" initiative promoting a balanced development across eight hubs and ten clusters [32][38] 2. AI's Impact on Data Center Demand - The launch of DeepSeek in January 2025 is expected to significantly increase the rack utilization rate in third-party data centers [3][79] - The average rack utilization rate in China was 56.4% by the end of 2023, indicating a mismatch between supply and demand [56] - The global demand for computing power is projected to grow at a rate exceeding 50% annually, with AI applications driving this growth [65][71] 3. Electricity Demand and Green Transformation - Data centers' electricity costs typically account for over 50% of their total operating costs, with some internet clients seeing this figure rise to 70-80% [95] - The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that global data center electricity consumption will double from 415 TWh in 2024 to approximately 945 TWh by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of about 15% [101] - By 2030, China's data center electricity demand is expected to reach between 300 billion and 700 billion kWh, representing 2.3% to 5.3% of the total electricity consumption [108][109]