Chinese Renewable Energy Giant Envision Launches Data Center

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(Bloomberg) — Envision Group has commissioned the initial phase of a gigawatt-scale data center in China’s Inner Mongolia, an unusual foray by a renewable energy company into the booming artificial intelligence industry.

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The Chinese company has began operation of the Galaxy Campus project in Ulanqab — a city about 350 kilometers (217 miles) northwest of Beijing with abundant wind power resources, it said in a statement. The initial 120-megawatt phase has already been allocated to two local tech giants, with plans to eventually scale the project to 2 gigawatts, which would make it one of the largest in China, the company said.

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Envision’s push is part of a broader race among Chinese firms to secure a foothold in the booming data center sector. The segment has to date been dominated by telecom operators, specialized developers, and internet giants including Tencent Holdings Ltd., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and China United Network Communications Ltd., according to BloombergNEF.

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AI company DeepSeek is also planning a 1 gigawatt data center in Ulanqab, according to people familiar with the matter. The city’s cold climate, with an average annual temperature of 4C (39F), helps reduce the energy required to cool power-hungry AI servers. Z.AI, formerly Zhipu, is also working on a 1 gigawatt project that it plans to fill with only domestically made chips.

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Envision will benefit from its wide renewables portfolio, which ranges from wind turbine manufacturing to battery production. That will give it a unique advantage, especially after the government required four-fifths of data center power to come from green electricity. 

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The Galaxy project is a cornerstone of Envision’s ambitions to develop 5 gigawatts of AI data center capacity globally by 2030. It will get 80% of its power from the company’s nearby wind farms through dedicated transmission cables, it said. Battery storage will be used as backup — stepping away from the traditional data center model of relying on diesel generators.

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Envision will provide the power infrastructure and supporting system, but won’t handle the actual data processing. Tech companies will effectively act as tenants, leasing the facilities and installing their own chip clusters, the energy firm said.

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