Wonder which will be more cost competitive in the "AI race"?

I don't think any of them will survive for very long on their own. The bigger players will gobble them up for cheap once the bubble pops.

"As they are located mostly in the east of the country, the data centre electricity supply in China today is dominated by coal with a near 70% share, followed by renewables with nearly 20%, nuclear close to 10% and natural gas accounting for the remainder. Between 2024 and 2030 coal remains the largest source of additional electricity for data centres, with annual generation increasing by nearly 90 TWh. Renewables, mostly solar PV and wind, add nearly 90 TWh over the same period, supported by an increase in the share of renewables in the grid electricity mix, provincial co-location mandates and policies to prioritise the construction of data centres in renewables-rich western China. After 2030 the introduction of SMRs significantly boosts the nuclear share of the data centre electricity mix. Between 2030 and 2035 the rise in renewables and nuclear pushes coal into decline. By 2035 both sources together make up nearly 60% of the data centre electricity supply in China."

Energy and AI World Energy Outlook Special Report International Energy Agency (IEA)

https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-...

https://www.iea.org/files/de9dea13-b07d-42c5-a398-d1b3ae17d8...

They still invest massivly into solar and renewable.

Guangdong is on the eastern coast. Inner Mongolia isn't, but the main data center hub of Ulanqab was no doubt chosen for being relatively close to Beijing. Guizhou is the one example that's actually somewhat remote, but it's a small share of the total so far. Farther west, Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang don't really feature at all in the datacenter business.

Ultimately, the benefits of proximity seem to be more important.

Not in China. They have as much renewable energy capacity in place as the rest of the world combined.

Hate now, clean up the mess later!

Surely, poisoning our air and further heating our planet has nothing to do with it.

It is a somewhat coherent argument IMO. Humans are way too greedy and focused on the next financial quarter/unsustainable growth to ever put the fire out without some kind of sea change.

We could have had cheap AI and renewables, but now we'll get expensive AI controlled by the data center owners and a few extra GW of gas turbines once the moratoriums really start flowing. If Musk has his way, we'll also get thousands of rocket launches building solar panels - but only in my space, where they can't do much to help the climate.

(Still a lot of coal, but massive build out…)

You can make data-centers that don't waste water, that use renewable energy, that aren't titanic eye and audio sores on their communities; it's just more expensive to do so.

Silicon Valley's greed will be its undoing.