Shanghai has little land, power or cool weather for data centers, so the city manages growth mainly through efficiency rules rather than site-by-site fights. State media reported in early 2026 that the city's more than 160 data centers used about 7 billion kilowatt-hours in 2025, close to 3% of all electricity used in Shanghai, nearly double the national share. New projects must meet a power-efficiency limit that has tightened from 1.3 to as low as 1.25, and the city may start charging inefficient sites higher electricity rates, as Beijing already does. Qin Hongbo of the Shanghai Energy Efficiency Center said 40 of the city's data centers already trade in the carbon market.
Most of the new building is in two districts. In Lingang, on the south-east coast, eight data centers have gone up, including sites for China Telecom, China Mobile and SenseTime, with the district offering subsidies of up to 10 million yuan to large new centers; an undersea data center off the Lingang coast began running in 2026 with 192 racks. In Qingpu, in the city's west, China Mobile broke ground on a data center in June 2024 and China Telecom's Yunhu site, with about 4,000 racks, has topped out; both sit inside a national computing hub that caps new sites at the same 1.25 efficiency limit.
What comes next is regulatory rather than a vote: Shanghai is revising its mandatory energy standard, which could push the efficiency limit lower still, and deciding whether to move more data centers onto the higher, inefficient-use electricity price.
Projects not tied to an area
Sites whose records name no county. Everything else is on the pages listed above.
Shanghai6
| Project | Company | Status | Power | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDG Shanghai Fengxian (SH1)Fengxian District | Princeton Digital Group (Warburg Pincus) | 42 MW | ||
| ByteDance Shanghai CampusPudong | ByteDance | Not reported | Not reported | |
| China Mobile Shanghai Data CenterPudongExact site not confirmed | China Mobile | Not reported | Not reported | |
| China Telecom Shanghai Zhangdong CampusPudong | China Telecom | Not reported | Not reported | |
| Equinix Shanghai Campus (SH1–SH6) | Equinix | Not reported | Source off site ↗ | |
| Tencent Shanghai Qingpu CampusQingpu DistrictExact site not confirmed | Tencent Cloud | Not reported |
Where this comes from
The reporting above was written from these. Open one and check it yourself.
Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.