According to Gizmodo, China has launched a $226 million underwater data center project in Shanghai’s Lin-gang Special Area that aims to solve two major environmental problems with traditional data centers: water consumption for cooling and carbon emissions. The facility currently has 24 megawatts of power capacity, with over 95% of its energy coming from offshore wind turbines, potentially eliminating both water usage and carbon footprint concerns. However, similar projects have faced regulatory scrutiny, including a startup called NetworkOcean that attempted to deploy GPU servers in San Francisco Bay without permits, raising concerns from scientists about potential ecological damage. The Chinese project received assessment from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and aligns with China’s goal to reduce data center power usage effectiveness (PUE) to 1.5 by 2025. This ambitious approach to data center cooling raises fundamental questions about environmental trade-offs.
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Table of Contents
The Fundamental Physics Problem
The core challenge with data centers isn’t just energy consumption—it’s heat dissipation. Modern data centers generate immense thermal loads, particularly with AI workloads that stress GPU clusters beyond traditional computing demands. Traditional cooling systems rely on heat exchange processes that consume massive amounts of water, contributing to water scarcity in regions already facing resource constraints. What makes underwater cooling theoretically attractive is the ocean’s natural heat capacity—water can absorb approximately 4 times more heat per unit volume than air, making it an efficient heat sink. However, this efficiency comes with ecological consequences that the industry is only beginning to quantify.
The Unseen Marine Consequences
While the Chinese project appears to have followed regulatory protocols, the scientific community remains deeply concerned about localized ocean heating effects. Even minor temperature increases in marine environments can disrupt delicate ecological balances. As scientists warned in the NetworkOcean case, temperature changes as small as 1-2 degrees Celsius could trigger toxic algae blooms that devastate local fisheries and marine life. More concerning is the compounding effect—when underwater data centers operate during ocean heatwaves, the additional thermal load could create dead zones where oxygen levels drop below survival thresholds for marine organisms. These aren’t theoretical risks—we’ve seen similar ecosystem collapses near industrial cooling water outflows from power plants and manufacturing facilities.
The Scaling Problem Nobody’s Discussing
The current 24-megawatt capacity represents just the beginning of what’s needed for AI infrastructure. As McKinsey research indicates, data centers are scaling from megawatts to gigawatts to handle AI workloads. If underwater data centers prove successful, we could see exponential growth in ocean-based computing infrastructure. The cumulative thermal impact of multiple facilities along coastlines could create regional warming patterns affecting coastal ecosystems and potentially altering local weather patterns. This scaling challenge is particularly acute given China’s ambitious PUE reduction targets, which may incentivize rapid deployment before long-term environmental impacts are fully understood.
The Global Regulatory Chasm
The contrasting approaches between China’s permitted project and NetworkOcean’s attempted deployment in San Francisco Bay highlight a fundamental divide in environmental regulation philosophy. China’s centralized approval process enables rapid deployment of large-scale infrastructure projects, while the U.S. system involves multiple regulatory bodies and extensive environmental impact assessments. This regulatory divergence creates both risks and opportunities—faster deployment could yield valuable data about real-world impacts, but inadequate oversight could lead to irreversible ecological damage. The global nature of ocean ecosystems means that one country’s data center strategy could affect international waters and neighboring nations’ marine resources.
Beyond Ocean Immersion
The industry is exploring multiple approaches to the cooling challenge that don’t involve potential marine ecosystem disruption. Advanced liquid cooling systems using dielectric fluids can achieve similar efficiency gains without environmental release risks. Some companies are deploying data centers in colder climates where ambient air provides natural cooling, while others are exploring waste heat capture for district heating systems. The fundamental question isn’t whether we need better cooling solutions—rising energy demands make that imperative—but whether ocean immersion creates more problems than it solves. As commercial deployment accelerates, independent environmental monitoring will be crucial to validate both the energy savings and ecological impacts.
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Balancing Innovation and Stewardship
The underwater data center concept represents exactly the kind of bold thinking needed to address technology’s environmental footprint. However, true sustainability requires considering both energy efficiency and ecosystem preservation. Before scaling this approach globally, we need comprehensive environmental impact assessments, independent monitoring protocols, and international standards for marine-based computing infrastructure. The ocean’s role in climate regulation is too critical to treat as a computing heat sink without thorough understanding of long-term consequences. As AI’s computational demands continue growing exponentially, we must ensure our solutions don’t create new environmental crises while solving existing ones.
