On August 22, 2026, the fourth annual Green Computing Power (Artificial Intelligence) Conference took place on the Cilechuan Grassland in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, drawing attention to the region's unique approach to powering the AI boom. 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 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 attention to this remote grassland? The answer lies in the region's vast wind resources and innovative energy management. Wind turbines on the prairie generate electricity, each rotation producing 12 kilowatt-hours of green power. This energy is not sent to the public grid but is transmitted via a dedicated 41-kilometer line to data centers miles away. Inside these centers, GPU arrays operate around the clock, powered predominantly by wind and solar energy.
The economics of computing power are stark: 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 more than 70% of its total operating expenses. This makes electricity costs a decisive factor in the competition for computing power. China's strategic response is the "East Data West Computing" project, which shifts high-demand computing tasks from eastern regions to resource-rich western areas. The Horinger data center cluster in Hohhot is among the country's top ten such clusters.
Hohhot offers near-optimal conditions for data center location: an average annual temperature of just 7°C and over 200 days per year suitable for direct outdoor air cooling, resulting in more than 20% savings in cooling costs. At an electricity price of about 0.36 yuan per kilowatt-hour, a large-scale GPU cluster can save around 50 million yuan annually on power. Currently, Hohhot'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 uninterrupted 24/7 power. The local solution is an innovative "computing-electricity synergy" mechanism. China Huadian Corporation has constructed a 360,000-kilowatt integrated wind-solar-storage power station, combining 300,000 kilowatts of wind, 60,000 kilowatts of photovoltaic, and energy 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 to dynamically allocate power: when green energy is abundant, storage charges and delay-tolerant tasks are prioritized; when green energy is scarce, storage discharges, the public grid supplements, and flexible tasks are deferred. This transforms the power system from a one-way supply 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 cool machine rooms. The B02 machine hall has improved its Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from 1.315 to 1.209, saving 560,000 kilowatt-hours annually since operations began. When both machine halls are fully operational, annual savings are projected to reach 10 million kilowatt-hours and 150,000 tons of water.
Today, 62 computing center projects have clustered in Hohhot, including data centers from China's three major telecom operators, 16 financial institutions, and computing nodes from Huawei, ByteDance, and Kuaishou. 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 needs.
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.
