The eastern Chinese city of Changzhou is developing what it describes as the country’s first city-level “green token factory” to support the growing artificial intelligence (AI) computing needs with clean energy. Announced during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Sunday, July 19th, 2026, the project is powered by renewable energy and is expected to produce 60 trillion tokens per year once completed.

The factory will connect directly to renewable energy plants, leveraging a national policy that allows green power to bypass public grids. This design is intended to optimize power usage, with token output projected to increase by 62.5% using the same computing power, enhancing both efficiency and economic viability.

The initiative was formalized through an agreement signed on Saturday, July 18th, 2026, involving seven parties, including Alibaba Cloud—the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group Holding—and Wangsu Science and Technology, a provider of information infrastructure platform services. The municipal government of Changzhou has not yet provided a timeline for the factory’s completion.

This project reflects local governments' efforts to align with Beijing’s directive to power large-scale AI computing with sustainable energy sources.

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