\n<\/p>\n
To grow its economy, China is betting big on artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other digital technology\u2014and a big part of that bet involves rapidly building data centers to boost computing power. But these massive collections of servers gobble up growing amounts of energy, and each one cycles through hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day to carry away the heat they generate.<\/p>\n
That means these facilities\u2014in China and beyond\u2014will increasingly compete with water demand linked directly to human survival, from agriculture to daily drinking. Many companies have sited their data centers in some of the driest regions of the world, including Arizona, parts of Spain, and the Middle East, because dry air reduces the risks of damage to the equipment from humidity, according to an investigation by the nonprofit journalist organization SourceMaterial and the Guardian. Partly to address water concerns, China is now putting a data center in the wettest place there is: the ocean. This June construction began on a wind-powered underwater data center about six miles off the coast of Shanghai, one of China\u2019s AI hubs. [Read more: What Do Google\u2019s AI Answers Cost the Environment?]<\/p>\n
\u201cChina\u2019s ambitious approach signals a bold shift toward low-carbon digital infrastructure, and it could influence global norms in sustainable computing,\u201d says Shabrina Nadhila, an analyst at energy-focused think tank Ember, who has researched data centers.<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n
Data centers store information and perform complex calculations for businesses, whose increasing automation is steadily ramping up such needs. These facilities consume vast amounts of electricity and water because their servers work nonstop and in close proximity\u2014and they generate waste heat as a by-product, which can damage equipment and destroy data. So they need to be constantly cooled.<\/p>\n
Roughly 40 percent of the electricity consumed by an ordinary data center is for this purpose. Most of that energy is used to chill water, which is sprayed into the air that circulates around the servers or is allowed to evaporate near them, lowering their temperatures. That water can come from underground, from nearby rivers or streams, or from reclaimed wastewater.<\/p>\n
An artist\u2019s rendering of a wind-powered underwater data center being built off the coast of Shanghai.<\/p>\n
Shanghai Hailanyun Technology<\/p>\n
Instead undersea data centers use pipes to pump seawater through a radiator on the back of server racks to absorb heat and carry it away. Hailanyun\u2014the company sometimes referred to as HiCloud that is behind the Shanghai data center\u2014says an assessment conducted with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows its project uses at least 30 percent less electricity than on-land data centers, thanks to natural cooling.<\/p>\n
The Shanghai center will also be connected to a nearby offshore wind farm that is set to supply 97 percent of its energy, says Hailanyun spokesperson Li Langping.<\/p>\n
The project\u2019s first phase is designed to contain 198 server racks\u2014enough to hold 396 to 792 AI-capable servers\u2014and is slated to begin operation in September, Li says. It is expected to provide enough computing power to complete the equivalent of training GPT-3.5\u2014the large language model that OpenAI released in 2022 and used to fine-tune ChatGPT\u2014in the space of a day, he adds. Yet Hailanyun\u2019s Shanghai center is small compared with a typical land-based one: a medium-scale data center in China normally has up to 3,000 standard racks, while a superscale version can contain more than 10,000.<\/p>\n
At the core of Hailanyun\u2019s $223-million Shanghai gambit is a technology that Microsoft pioneered more than a decade ago under an effort called Project Natick, in which the company sank a shipping-container-sized capsule holding more than 800 servers 117 feet below the surface off the coast of Scotland. After hauling up the pod two years later, Microsoft found that underwater data centers \u201care reliable, practical and use energy sustainably.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experiment also resulted in fewer broken servers compared with on-land data centers because the vessel was sealed off and filled with nitrogen, which is less corrosive than oxygen, Microsoft said in a 2020 press release. The lack of people also meant that the equipment avoided physical contacts or movements that may otherwise cause them damage in an on-land center, the company said.<\/p>\n
Hailanyun places the first phase of its underwater data center into the ocean off the coast of Hainan in December 2022.<\/p>\n
Shanghai Hailanyun Technology<\/p>\n
But Microsoft has reportedly shelved Project Natick. A company spokesperson did not answer questions about whether or not the project was terminated. Instead, they provided a statement: \u201cWhile we don\u2019t currently have data centers in the water, we will continue to use Project Natick as a research platform to explore, test, and validate new concepts around data center reliability and sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hailanyun aims to leapfrog American companies: if the Shanghai project is successful, Li expects his company to springboard toward large-scale deployments of offshore, wind-powered undersea data centers with the support of the Chinese government.<\/p>\n
Zhang Ning, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in next-generation low-carbon infrastructure, notes that Hailanyun has moved from a pilot project conducted in Hainan in December 2022 to commercial rollouts in less than 30 months\u2014\u201csomething Microsoft\u2019s Project Natick never attempted.\u201d<\/p>\n
In spite of the apparent benefits of underwater data centers, some concerns remain\u2014especially over potential environmental impacts. Microsoft researchers found their pod had caused some localized warming in the sea, though the impact was limited. \u201cThe water just meters downstream of a Natick vessel would get a few thousandths of a degree warmer at most,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n
But other researchers say submerged data centers could harm aquatic biodiversity during a marine heat wave\u2014a period of unusually high ocean temperatures. In those cases, the outlet water from the vessel would be even warmer and hold less of the oxygen that aquatic creatures need to survive, a 2022 paper said.<\/p>\n
Two water-tight containers carrying servers and other equipment are lowered into the ocean off the coast of Hainan as part of China\u2019s first commercial underwater data center in November 2023.<\/p>\n
Shanghai Hailanyun Technology<\/p>\n
Another concern is security. A 2024 study found that undersea data centers can be destroyed by certain noises carried out by underwater speaker systems, which raises concerns about malicious attacks using sound.<\/p>\n
In response to such concerns, Hailanyun says its undersea data centers are \u201cenvironmentally friendly,\u201d citing an assessment conducted on one of its test pods in southern China\u2019s Pearl River in 2020. \u201cThe heat dissipated by the undersea data center caused less than one degree of temperature rise in the surrounding water,\u201d Li says. \u201cIt virtually did not cause any substantial impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
The undersea data center concept seems to have growing appeal beyond China. Countries including South Korea have also announced plans to pursue them, while Japan and Singapore are mulling data centers that float on the ocean\u2019s surface instead.<\/p>\n
Zhang says that whether other coastal areas will dive into the trend hinges less on technical feasibility and more on how quickly would-be operators can resolve the regulatory, ecological and supply-chain questions that \u201cChina is now tackling at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To grow its economy, China is betting big on artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other digital technology\u2014and a big part of that bet involves rapidly building data centers to boost computing power. But these massive collections of servers gobble up growing amounts of energy, and each one cycles through hundreds of thousands of gallons of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[710,1805,2153,1111,4476,3347],"class_list":{"0":"post-11198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-boom","9":"tag-centers","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-data","12":"tag-powers","13":"tag-undersea"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}