On August 22, 2026, the fourth annual Green Computing Power (Artificial Intelligence) Conference convened on the Cilechuan Grassland in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. The event, themed "Building Synergy between Computing and Electricity, Exploring New Horizons in Token Economy, and Creating the Future of Artificial Intelligence Together," unveiled the Green Computing Power Development Research Report (2026) and showcased pilot projects such as "millisecond-level urban computing." Major corporations including ByteDance and Cambricon signed agreements worth tens of billions, focusing on green intelligent computing centers and token factories.
The attention on Hohhot stems from its unique advantages for data center operations. With an average annual temperature of only 7°C and over 200 days suitable for outdoor air cooling, the city cuts cooling costs by more than 20%. Electricity priced at about 0.36 yuan per kilowatt-hour enables a large-scale GPU cluster to save approximately 50 million yuan annually. Currently, Hohhot's total computing capacity reaches 150,000 P, with over 80% powered by green energy.
The core challenge is integrating intermittent renewable energy with the constant power demands of computing. The solution is an innovative "computing-electricity synergy" mechanism. China Huadian Corporation built a 360,000-kilowatt wind-solar-storage station, with 300,000 kilowatts of wind, 60,000 kilowatts of solar, and four-hour energy storage. A collaborative control platform collects data on wind output, solar irradiance, storage status, and computing load at millisecond intervals to dynamically allocate power. When green energy is abundant, storage charges and delay-tolerant tasks run; when scarce, storage discharges and the grid supplements, while flexible tasks defer. This transforms power generation and consumption into a bidirectional interactive system.
On the consumption side, efficiency measures are equally innovative. The Hohhot data center operated by China Mobile recovers waste heat from nearby power plants for cooling. Its B02 machine hall improved Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from 1.315 to 1.209, saving 560,000 kilowatt-hours annually. Full operation of two halls could save 10 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 150,000 tons of water per year.
These developments have attracted 62 computing center projects, including data centers from China's three major telecom operators, 16 financial institutions, and computing nodes from Huawei, ByteDance, Kuaishou, and others. Upstream, 45 manufacturers produce servers, cabinets, and sensors locally. The recently published three-year action plan aims to establish 10 token factories by 2028, capable of producing 20 trillion tokens daily, allowing customers to procure intelligent services directly rather than just hardware.
The prairie winds remain constant, and Hohhot is converting every kilowatt-hour of green electricity into stable, reliable computing power, positioning itself as a critical hub in China's AI infrastructure.
