In the first issue of the first half of 2026, IEEE Energy Sustainability Magazine published a Special Issue themed "Energy Sustainability with Computility–Electricity–Carbon Coordination". The special issue was led at the invitation of Professor Kang Chongqing, President of the Tsinghua Energy Internet Research Institute, and jointly organized with Dai Jing, Deputy Director of the Energy Governance Research Team of the Tsinghua Energy Internet Research Institute, and Du Ershun, Associate Researcher and Head of the Computility–Power Coordination Research Team of the Tsinghua Energy Internet Research Institute.
Cover of the IEEE Energy Sustainability Magazine Special Issue
In recent years, driven by the explosive growth of large AI models, computing centers — the core infrastructure supporting computing services — have seen their scale expansion come into conflict with high energy consumption and high carbon emissions, which has become a key challenge constraining global sustainable development. It is estimated that global electricity consumption of computing centers reached 415 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024, accounting for approximately 1.5% of the world’s total electricity consumption. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that by 2035, carbon emissions from computing centers in China and the United States will account for 3%–4.5% of each country’s total national emissions. In 2026, the Government Work Report incorporated "computing–power coordination" into the new infrastructure initiative for the first time, marking it as an important strategic technological development direction for China. Accordingly, this special issue invited contributions from scholars at renowned universities and research institutions and engineering professionals from industry across multiple countries, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Singapore and Australia, and ultimately collected 10 high-quality papers. These papers conduct in-depth theoretical research and applied analysis around three major directions: interaction technologies between sustainable AI and power systems, flexible operation technologies of computing centers, and decarbonization frameworks for computing centers.
Professor Kang Chongqing, Dr. Dai Jing and Associate Researcher Du Ershun co-authored the Guest Editorial, in which they noted that computility–electricity–carbon coordination is both an emerging challenge and a transformative opportunity in the field of energy sustainability. Through the deep coupling of three pillars — efficient scheduling of computing loads, flexible power supply from renewable energy and smart grids, and full-lifecycle carbon-aware decision-making — effective solutions can be provided to key energy-sustainability challenges, including the low-carbon transformation of the AI computing industry, the integration and safe operation of renewable energy in new-type power systems, and the coordinated planning of computing and energy infrastructure.
Guest Editorial of the IEEE Energy Sustainability Magazine Special Issue
Professor Mohammad Shahidehpour, Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Energy Sustainability Magazine and Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, pointed out in the Editor’s Voice column that the rapid expansion of digital industries represented by AI has made data center energy consumption and carbon emissions a major challenge to global energy sustainability, and that computility–electricity–carbon coordination is precisely an effective pathway to resolving this dilemma.
Editor’s Voice Column of IEEE Energy Sustainability Magazine
It is reported that the launch of IEEE Energy Sustainability Magazine is an important initiative by the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) to establish a presence in the field of energy sustainability amid the global wave of carbon neutrality, dedicated to disseminating cutting-edge concepts and practical experience related to environmental sustainability and climate change in power system operation and planning. The magazine is a quarterly publication that publishes a varying number of papers of different types per issue on an invitation basis, in the form of Special Issues or regular Articles, aiming to help relevant professionals — including those across disciplines — quickly grasp the latest technologies in a given field.
Link:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber="11367116&punumber=10599323
