6th US-China Green Data Center Workshop

6th US-China Green Data Center Workshop was held in Nantong on November 18, 2017. The workshop was led by US-China Energy Cooperation Program (ECP), co-hosted by US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), Department of Commerce (DOC),American National Standard Institute (ANSI), Nantong Municipal People's Government, Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE), and co-organized by Nantong Economic and Development District Management Committee, Nantong Economic and Information Technology Commission and Nantong Big Data Administration. Leaders from government departments and institutions concerned, like Steven Winkates, Program Management Director for East Asia, USTDA, Bradley Harker, Senior Commercial Officer of DOC, US Embassy Beijing, You Yong, Director of Energy Conservation Department of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and LIU Mingliang, Deputy Secretary General of CIE delivered speeches at the summit.More than 200 representatives from international well-known enterprises, like Alibaba, China Unicom, GDS, Huawei, Caterpillar, UTC, JCI, Nuclear, Honeywell and OSIsoft attended the event.

China’s data center industry has been developing rapidly in the past five years. One of the main features of this industry is its great demand for electronic power, which at present mostly comes from coal-fired power plants. To reduce the carbon footprint in data center industry, ECP focuses on integration technologies that can further reduce energy consumption, including power on demand, high-temperature operation, liquid cooling, low-temperature heat recovery, CCHP, micro grid, etc. Energy saving has become a fundamental demand of data center development.

Since the end of 2013, ECP and CIE have cooperated in organizing a series of activities on green data center, such as workshops, investigation tours to US, project demonstrations and business cooperation, including the US-China Green Data Center Workshops. This year, China started its evaluations of national green data center experimental units, and a list of China’s national green data centers was released by MIIT to promote energy-saving technologies. Organizing workshops and other activities for experience sharing and cooperation between US and China will be of great importance to the construction of green data centers in both countries.

The event was held in Nantong, which has not only provided a good platform for cooperation between US and Chinese green data center enterprises, but also offered valuable experiences for Nantong’s big data industry development. It is also significant for constructing an important cyber port in eastern China. Nantong is one of the first cities in China to set up a big data bureau and build an international big data industrial park with nearly 3000 racks to hold over 50,000 servers. Nantong’s international big data industrial park and data center industrial park have attracted a number of projects in big data industry.

The workshop was widely praised by attendees. At the meeting, representatives actively interacted with each other, making lots of valuable comments and suggestions. ECP believes with a constant communication between US and China on technology, cooperation mechanism, etc., US-China green data centers will surely be further developed.