Beneath the waves off Shanghai, China is launching a new era of digital infrastructure—cooling its AI-powered data centers with the chill of the ocean, and potentially reshaping the global approach to sustainable computing. Traditional data centers, both in China and globally, use enormous amounts of electricity, with cooling alone accounting for around 40% of their power consumption. Most centers rely heavily on fresh water to remove heat, which intensifies competition with agriculture and drinking water needs, especially in arid regions. To avoid this, China has started constructing a data center six miles off Shanghai's coast, tapping into seawater's cooling properties and connecting the facility to a nearby offshore wind farm for nearly all its energy, Scientific American reports.
The project, spearheaded by Hailanyun, is expected to use at least 30% less electricity compared to land-based data centers and is set to house up to 792 AI-capable servers in its first phase. While this is modest by the standards of land-based data centers, Hailanyun hopes to scale up quickly, surpassing the efforts of US tech giants like Microsoft, which previously led underwater data center experiments but has since paused development. Despite environmental assessments suggesting minimal impact from the heat released into surrounding waters, concerns remain, particularly around the risk of local marine warming during heat waves and security vulnerabilities posed by underwater sound attacks. Still, the model is attracting international interest, with South Korea, Japan, and Singapore considering similar ocean-based solutions.
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