Company: GDHLF
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001410578-25-000935
Chunk: 29

Company: GDS Holdings Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 3
Chunk 29
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 Commission made similar classification under the Implementation Opinions of Zhejiang Province on Establishing and Improving Ladder Electricity Tariffs for High Energy Consuming Industries and Penalty Electricity Tariffs for Unit Product Exceeding Energy Consumption Limits (Draft for Comments) published on October 3, 2021. With respect to specific enterprises who are subject to rules and regulations related to high energy consumption, the NDRC further required local authorities to publish a list of high energy-consuming enterprises based on the national energy efficiency benchmark in key areas of high energy consuming industries in connection with the power market system under the Notice on Signing and Performing Medium and Long Term Electric Power Contracts in 2023 published on December 2, 2022. While as of the date of this annual report, we have not been asked to pay electricity tariff above the 20% ceiling, there is a trend to designate data centers as a key industry in terms of high energy consumption and therefore we cannot assure you that we will not be considered as high energy consuming enterprises in the future, which will lead to the potential increase in power cost and may affect our capacity to recover such increased power cost from our customers. For more information about risks arising from fixed price agreements with our customers, see “ - We enter into fixed price agreements with many customers, and our failure to accurately estimate the resources and time required for the fulfillment of our obligations under these agreements could negatively affect our results of operations.”

Furthermore, no matter at a state level or at a local level, policies have been rolled out to apply differential electricity tariffs to data centers. On August 24, 2024, the Cyberspace Administration of China, or the CAC, the NDRC, the MIIT, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the SAMR, and the National Bureau of Statistics promulgated the Implementation Guidelines for Coordinated Digital and Green Transformation and Development, according to which, data centers have been specifically included in the scenario of application of differential electricity tariffs, with the electricity tariffs determined according to the actual operational PUE of data centers. Some local authorities, such as those in Jiangsu and Beijing, have promulgated regulations imposing punitive or differential electricity tariffs on data centers whose PUE or energy consumption exceeds the specified threshold. PUE is also influenced by our clients’ power usage during their move-in process, which is beyond our control. Fluctuations in our clients