The fourth annual Green Computing Power (Artificial Intelligence) Conference convened on August 22, 2026, on the Cilechuan Grassland in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, drawing attention to the city's unique role in China's computing power strategy. With the theme "Building Synergy between Computing and Electricity, Exploring New Horizons in Token Economy, and Creating the Future of Artificial Intelligence Together," the event unveiled the Green Computing Power Development Research Report (2026) and highlighted pilot projects like "millisecond-level urban computing." Major companies, including ByteDance and Cambricon, signed agreements worth tens of billions of yuan to develop green intelligent computing centers and token factories.
Why has the national computing power industry turned its gaze to this grassland? The answer lies in the steady rotation of wind turbines, each turn generating 12 kilowatt-hours of green electricity. This clean energy travels via a dedicated 41-kilometer line to data centers tens of kilometers away, bypassing the public grid. Inside these centers, GPU arrays run around the clock, powered predominantly by wind and solar. Training large-scale AI models with tens of thousands of GPUs can consume over 100 million kilowatt-hours annually. For instance, the Hohhot Intelligent Computing Center, operated by China Mobile, incurred electricity costs of approximately 290 million yuan in 2025, accounting for over 70% of its total operating expenses. In the fierce competition for computing power, electricity costs have become a decisive factor.
China's strategic response is the "East Data West Computing" project, which redirects high computing demand from eastern regions to resource-rich western areas. The Horinger data center cluster in Hohhot is among the top ten national clusters. The city offers near-optimal conditions for data center location: an average annual temperature of just 7°C, over 200 days suitable for direct outdoor air cooling, and electricity prices around 0.36 yuan per kilowatt-hour. These factors yield more than 20% savings in cooling costs and approximately 50 million yuan in annual power savings for a large-scale GPU cluster. Currently, Hohhot's total computing capacity reaches 150,000 P, with green electricity usage exceeding 80%.
However, the "green" aspect itself poses a challenge. Wind and solar power fluctuate with weather, while computing loads require uninterrupted 24/7 power. The local solution is an innovative "computing-electricity synergy" mechanism. China Huadian Corporation has built a 360,000-kilowatt integrated wind-solar-storage power station, comprising 300,000 kilowatts of wind, 60,000 kilowatts of photovoltaic, and storage capable of four-hour continuous regulation. A collaborative control platform collects data on wind output, solar irradiance, storage status, and computing load at millisecond intervals, dynamically allocating power: when green energy is abundant, storage charges and delay-tolerant tasks are prioritized; when green energy is limited, storage discharges and the public grid supplements. This transforms power generation and consumption from a unidirectional supply model to a bidirectional interactive system.
On the consumption side, efforts to minimize waste are also underway. The Hohhot data center operated by China Mobile recovers waste heat from nearby power plants to provide cooling. The B02 machine hall has improved its Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from 1.315 to 1.209, resulting in annual electricity savings of 560,000 kilowatt-hours since commencing operations. Upon full operation of two machine halls, annual savings are projected to reach 10 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 150,000 tons of water.
Today, 62 computing center projects have clustered in Hohhot, including data centers of China's three major telecom operators, 16 financial institutions, and computing nodes from Huawei, ByteDance, Kuaishou, and others. Upstream, 45 manufacturing enterprises produce servers, cabinets, and sensors locally. According to the recently published three-year action plan, by 2028, Hohhot aims to establish 10 token factories capable of producing 20 trillion tokens daily. At that time, customers will procure not only cabinets and bandwidth but also directly accessible intelligent services customized to their requirements. The prairie winds remain constant, as does the city's commitment to converting every kilowatt-hour of green electricity into stable and reliable computing power.
