Recently, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and John Fetterman, both Democrats, proposed a draft bill called the Clean Cloud Act of 2025, which would set a regional cap on carbon emissions from cryptocurrency mining facilities and AI data centers. The emission cap will be set at the end of 2025 and will drop by 11% each year until it reaches zero in 2035. Facilities that exceed the cap before 2035 will face fines, and all facilities must use 100% renewable energy by 2035. Facilities that still use non-renewable energy will be fined.
The draft would also require facilities to submit detailed annual reports on electricity use and sources so that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can calculate their greenhouse gas emissions intensity.
According to a report from the Development Research Center of the State Council, with the strong market demand for AI big models, the strong demand for data center construction, data center scale and computing power in big model research and development has led to the total scale of domestic data centers ranking second in the world. It is estimated that by 2030, the electricity consumption of data centers will reach 3%-4% of global electricity consumption, and by 2030 it will be close to 400 billion kWh. Based on the average emission factor of the national power grid, the current carbon dioxide emissions of data centers account for about 0.4% of all greenhouse gas emissions. It is expected that by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, it will increase to about 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
At present, with the continuous development of AI big models, metaverse, future Internet Web3.0 and other fields, the speed of data center construction will increase, the demand for computing power will further increase, and the power consumption of data centers will also grow rapidly. The competition for computing power is evolving into a competition for energy resources. In other words, in the future, if you want to enter and exit the metaverse more smoothly, play 3A games more efficiently, and interact with AI online at any time, it is essentially a competition for high-performance, instantly accessible computing power and a reliance on hydropower energy.
Under the development concept of low-carbon emission reduction and green economy, combined with the vigorous development trend of emerging technologies, whether energy is renewable and whether energy emissions are close to zero will continue to be hot topics that attract public attention in the future.
DeCloud, or decentralized cloud computing, is one of the DePIN fields. The concept of DeCloud refers to integrating distributed idle computing resources into a decentralized cloud computing ecosystem through blockchain, smart contracts, token economy, privacy computing, intelligent computing, and AI technology. Currently, PowerVerse is one of the projects that is deploying nodes in this field.
Through DeCloud, the market's performance and demand for computing power will be further met, and more importantly, energy consumption and emissions will be further reduced.
Integrate and activate idle computing resources and improve overall resource utilization
DeCloud integrates idle computing resources. In this context, the problem of computing resources and energy being wasted is solved, further improving the utilization rate of overall computing resources. According to Flexera's report, the effective utilization rate of cloud purchased by enterprises in 2022 is only 68%, which means that 32% of cloud resources are wasted. On the other hand, Gartner predicts that cloud spending will reach nearly $500 billion in 2022, which means that a rough estimate of $160 billion in cloud spending is wasted. If 32% of computing resources can be fully utilized, the goal of green and low-carbon will be further achieved.
Computing nodes are dispatched nearby to optimize energy efficiency
DeCloud supplies computing resources through a distributed computing node network. Through the AI intelligent scheduling mechanism, DeCloud can distribute computing tasks to nodes with lower energy consumption, higher energy efficiency or renewable energy for execution. For example, tasks are scheduled to nodes with sufficient solar energy during the day, and wind energy areas are given priority at night, and tasks are assigned to nodes in cold areas with lower cooling costs - this not only reduces overall power consumption, but also reduces indirect carbon emissions caused by auxiliary systems such as cooling.
Encourage green node participation and promote the use of renewable energy
PowerVerse can encourage nodes that use green energy to join through the platform's incentive mechanism, and this applies to all decentralized cloud computing projects. For example, the platform can incentivize computing nodes that use renewable energy such as wind power/photovoltaic power, and provide these "green nodes" with higher weights and higher income incentives, forming a positive cycle of "using green electricity to obtain higher income", and promoting more computing node operators to switch to green energy supply, gradually replacing traditional high-carbon energy.
Reduce the concentrated pressure on the power grid from hyperscale data centers
Traditional Web2 cloud computing relies on centralized data centers, which consume huge amounts of energy and often burden local power grids, forcing power companies to increase peak loads and enable high-emission backup power sources. DeCloud is deployed in nodes around the world, which not only reduces peak pressure on the power grid, but also reduces the need for carbon-intensive energy to "save the day."
Encourage long-term use of hardware and delay the generation of electronic waste
The DeCloud platform can encourage computing nodes to use old servers, mining machines, PCs and other equipment to re-participate in network computing, and provide policy support and economic support to nodes using old equipment to reduce carbon emissions and electronic waste. Under the logic of economic benefits, more computing power providers will use newer and better equipment to provide computing power to obtain higher economic benefits, which will bring more carbon emissions.
Through reasonable economic tilt policies, the platform can allow computing nodes that do not consume more energy to obtain relatively ideal returns. This scenario may have a chance to happen. In this way, the long-term use of old equipment effectively extends the hardware life cycle and reduces carbon emissions and electronic waste generated during manufacturing and scrapping. In contrast, traditional cloud vendors tend to frequently update data center hardware in pursuit of the highest performance and stability.
Promote the establishment of "carbon transparency" and "carbon responsibility" mechanisms
With the introduction of smart contracts and on-chain recording mechanisms, the DeCloud network can record the energy usage, sources and carbon emissions of each computing task. Through effective mechanism construction, the DeCloud platform is expected to achieve a "carbon bill" attached to each computing power transaction in the future. Users or enterprises can freely choose "green computing power" and establish a smart contract reward and punishment mechanism based on carbon footprint. In this way, the "carbon transparent computing network" of the Web3 era can be formed. Computing power nodes with huge energy consumption may need to pay more "carbon payments", and computing power nodes using clean energy/renewable energy may obtain more "green income". This mechanism will encourage more computing power nodes to use renewable energy, and more users may also choose "green computing power" nodes, thereby positively building a green computing power network.
Conclusion
The Development Research Center of the State Council stated that low-carbon operation of data centers has become an inevitable choice to alleviate the huge energy consumption demand of AI. On the one hand, low-carbon operation of data centers is an inevitable choice for the sustainable development of my country's digital economy; on the other hand, low-carbonization of data production is also an important aspect of ensuring my country's digital competitiveness. The core of low-carbon operation of data centers lies in reducing energy consumption, green electricity accessibility and load regulation capabilities.
DeCloud is one of the "greener" DePIN infrastructures. It provides an innovative technical path for a low-carbon future through decentralization, intelligent scheduling, green incentives and carbon responsibility mechanisms.
In the comments on the draft Clean Cloud Act of 2025 mentioned at the beginning of this article, Senate EPW Democrats, a Democratic member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said on X (formerly Twitter): "Cryptography and AI data centers could support clean energy, but they consume more and more fossil fuels and drive up household energy bills. We can lead the way in AI and climate security with Whitehouse's Clean Cloud Act to ensure that these profitable industries take their due responsibilities."
According to the details of the bill, the responsibility for fines will be borne by the tenants of rented facilities, not the landlords, which means that startups that rent server space will also be included in the scope of reporting and fines.
It is understandable that, as Senate EPW Democrats stated, while we enjoy the convenience brought by technology, such as improved work efficiency and quality through AI dialogue and generative images, obtaining NFTs and cryptocurrencies through the on-chain economy, and socializing and entertaining with friends thousands of miles away through immersive scene experiences in the metaverse, behind all this is the consumption and support of energy and resources.
How to trace carbon emission reduction, how to confirm it, and how to establish a mechanism. I believe that DeCloud built on the chain will be one of the options for effectively participating in low-carbon emission reduction and developing a green economy in the future.
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