China's total electricity consumption reached 10.4 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2025, marking the first time a single country has crossed the 10-trillion-kWh threshold, according to data released by the National Energy Administration (NEA) on January 17.

The figure sets a new global record. China's power use is more than double that of the United States, and exceeds the combined electricity consumption of the European Union, Russia, India and Japan, the NEA said.

Beyond sheer scale, the growth reflects a structural transformation in China's economy, one increasingly driven by advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence (AI) and green development.

That shift has also drawn international attention. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said the global AI industry is facing an energy bottleneck, as chip production accelerates faster than electricity supply. China, he noted, stands out as an exception.

"Maybe later this year, we will be producing more chips than we can turn on," Musk said during a conversation at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22. "Except for China. China's growth in electricity is tremendous."

Inside China, electricity demand is being reshaped by the deep integration of industrial upgrading and next-generation information technologies. China Media Group has reported a series of cases illustrating how new industries and services are driving power consumption growth.

In east China's Zhejiang Province, a new materials company in Hangzhou recorded electricity consumption of more than 25 million kWh in 2025, driven by the addition of high-purity semiconductor equipment and new energy-storage electrode production lines. The company has seen sustained order growth amid surging demand from the semiconductor and AI materials sectors.

AI's rapid expansion is also boosting power use in services. In the same province, an intelligent elderly-care service provider reported a 25 percent year-on-year increase in electricity consumption in 2025, largely due to large-model training and new product testing.

Meanwhile, electrification in transportation continues to gain momentum. In south China's Guangdong Province, charging stations operated by the provincial power grid recorded nearly 800 million kWh of charging volume in 2025, extending a streak of six consecutive years of growth.

Powering this surge is a parallel acceleration in clean energy. Data from NEA shows that green electricity trading volume reached 328.5 billion kWh in 2025, up 38.3 percent year on year and 18 times the level of 2022. The expansion has helped meet rising corporate demand for low-carbon power, while supporting China's broader push toward a greener industrial structure.

As electricity demand breaks new ground, China's combination of scale and sustainability is emerging as a key enabler of the AI era – providing not only the energy to power algorithms and data centers, but also a pathway toward low-carbon growth.