Hohhot's Green Computing Power Conference Highlights Synergy Between Renewable Energy and AI Infrastructure

The fourth annual Green Computing Power (Artificial Intelligence) Conference convened on the Cilechuan Grassland in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, on August 22, 2026, drawing attention to the city's emergence as a hub for sustainable AI infrastructure. The event highlighted the Green Computing Power Development Research Report (2026) and pilot initiatives such as 'millisecond-level urban computing' applications. Major agreements worth tens of billions were signed with companies like ByteDance and Cambricon, focusing on green intelligent computing centers and token factories.

The conference's location is no coincidence. Hohhot offers a combination of factors ideal for data centers: an average annual temperature of 7°C, more than 200 days suitable for outdoor air cooling, and electricity prices around 0.36 yuan per kilowatt-hour. These conditions enable a large-scale GPU cluster to save approximately 50 million yuan annually on power expenses. Currently, the city's total computing capacity reaches 150,000 P, with green electricity usage exceeding 80%.

However, the 'green' aspect presents a challenge: wind and solar power are intermittent, while computing loads require constant power. To address this, China Huadian Corporation has constructed a 360,000-kilowatt integrated wind-solar-storage power station, featuring 300,000 kilowatts of wind, 60,000 kilowatts of photovoltaic, and energy storage with four-hour regulation capability. A collaborative control platform dynamically allocates power based on real-time data, ensuring stable supply while maximizing renewable usage.

On the consumption side, innovations reduce waste. The Hohhot data center operated by China Mobile recovers waste heat from nearby power plants for cooling, improving its Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from 1.315 to 1.209. This results in annual electricity savings of 560,000 kilowatt-hours per machine hall; full operation of two halls could save 10 million kilowatt-hours and 150,000 tons of water annually.

The strategic importance of this development lies in the 'East Data West Computing' project, which redirects high computing demand from eastern regions to resource-rich western areas like Inner Mongolia. With 62 computing center projects clustered in Hohhot, including data centers of China's three major telecom operators and computing nodes from Huawei, ByteDance, and Kuaishou, the city is becoming a cornerstone of China's digital infrastructure.

According to the recently published three-year action plan, Hohhot aims to establish 10 token factories capable of producing 20 trillion tokens daily by 2028. This would allow customers to procure not just cabinets and bandwidth, but also directly accessible intelligent services customized to their needs.

The prairie winds remain constant, and so does the city's commitment to converting every kilowatt-hour of green electricity into stable and reliable computing power. This conference underscores the critical role of renewable energy in the future of AI, as the industry seeks to balance computational demands with environmental sustainability.