China’s Power Demand to Add 3 Shanghai-Sized Loads Annually in 15th Five-Year Plan

The scale here matters less as a demand statistic than as a signal about where China's incremental power needs are coming from: the NEA is explicitly tying rigid growth to computing power, which places data centers and AI infrastructure inside the same planning envelope as traditional industry. That framing gives grid and generation buildout a policy rationale that extends beyond cyclical manufacturing. The open question is whether supply capacity additions keep pace with a load increase this size each year, and how that balance feeds through to fuel and equipment demand.