It actually abuts Hebei which puts it in striking distance of Beijing. I wonder about water though, it’s just grassland so there can’t be much to spare. It would be like building a data center in eastern Oregon.
I thought water is for cooling. They dont need it if its naturally cooled.
Or use closed-loop cooling.
They would need closed loop cooling for the months that weren’t cold enough, well, they would probably need it anyways just that it would be more efficient in the long bitter winter. The extra clean energy from wind and solar might make that reasonable though.
The enormous water usage values are generally about powerplants providing the power, and even the better reports on that include water use by hydroelectric plants - which makes sense in context of the report, but that context nor sense isn't understood by journalists and hype-men quoting just "trillions of gallons a year, more than X cities"