Alibaba Cloud's Zhangbei Data Center: Green Low‑Carbon Design and Liquid‑Cooling Innovations

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s three‑year action plan for new‑type data centers aims to create a layout that is reasonable, technologically advanced, green, low‑carbon, and matched to the scale of digital‑economy growth. In this context, Alibaba Cloud’s Zhangbei data center, the closest large‑scale facility to Beijing, showcases how to build a low‑carbon, green data center.

Located at 43° N on a high‑altitude plateau, Zhangbei enjoys abundant wind resources, an average annual temperature of only 3.2 °C, and excellent air quality for 346 days a year, which reduces equipment operation costs and extends server lifespan.

Since 2015, Alibaba has deployed a “one‑use, two‑backup, three‑center” architecture at Zhangbei, housing over one million servers. The center uses wind power and a combined air‑handling unit (AHU) wind‑wall system that brings cool, high‑quality outdoor air directly into the server hall, enabling more than 300 days of natural cooling and dramatically lowering air‑conditioning electricity consumption.

Green IT energy‑saving milestones include:

2015 – Exploration of liquid‑cooling technology; servers immersed in insulating coolant, achieving near‑zero cooling energy consumption and over 70 % energy savings.

2016 – Release of the first immersion liquid‑cooling system.

June 2018 – Launch of China’s first immersion‑type liquid‑cooling production cluster.

2020 – Opening of the world’s largest fully immersed liquid‑cooling data center (Alibaba Zhejiang Cloud Computing Renhe), earning ODCC’s 5‑star green‑grid certification.

With modular design and AI‑driven temperature control, Zhangbei’s annual Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is below 1.2 and can reach as low as 1.09, saving roughly 80,000 tons of standard coal each year—equivalent to planting four million trees. All Alibaba Cloud self‑built data centers now meet national green‑data‑center standards, with an average PUE under 1.3.

According to Alibaba Cloud Infrastructure Data Center General Manager Gao Shanyuan, liquid cooling breaks the density limits of traditional air cooling, significantly reduces system failure rates, and its open‑source specifications foster an ecosystem of partners.

The “Zero‑Carbon Cloud” initiative, announced in May, promotes energy‑saving, carbon‑reduction, and green‑technology innovation. Alibaba Cloud has traded 6.38 billion kWh of clean energy (wind, solar, natural‑gas) this year, cutting CO₂ emissions by 510,000 tons—leading the Chinese internet industry. Plans include achieving 100 % zero‑carbon clean energy at the Guangdong Heyuan data center by 2022 and reducing the Hangzhou center’s PUE to below 1.09, saving 70 million kWh annually.

In the era of the digital economy, reliable data center operation is essential for all industries. Advanced, green, low‑carbon technologies are now key drivers for the next generation of data centers, with Zhangbei serving as a leading example.