Link: https://www.eco-business.com/news/concerns-raised-as-data-centres-go-underwater-in-china/

Archived version

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AI technology and the smart economy are growing quickly in China. The country had 60 AI data centres operating or under construction by the end of 2023. This year, the figure is 250. Local governments and companies see underwater data centres as a new and more sustainable approach. But experts warn it is too early to say if they really are a green solution, voicing concerns over their impacts on nearby organisms.

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More data centres going up has led to concerns over land use and the consumption of energy and water. China’s smart economy needs to tackle this as a matter of urgency. By 2030, data centres will be behind 4.8 per cent of the nation’s electricity use, as predicted by the Beijing Institute of Technology in 2025 research.

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This isn’t HiCloud’s first underwater data centre. In 2023, sister company Shenzhen HiCloud Data Center Technology set up a commercial example, with servers in three sealed capsules, placed on the seabed of Qingshui Bay, Hainan. The company says it plans to eventually build 100 of these capsules at a total cost of CNY 5.6 billion (US$830 million), without specifying the location.

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Local governments have high hopes for the new technology, but there’s little understanding of how it might affect ecosystems. HiCloud’s data centres in Shanghai pump seawater into a heat exchanger, where it absorbs heat from inside the facility and is pumped back out, now warmer.

Stephen Watson, senior ecosystem services researcher at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, said: “The heat given off by underwater data centres may have behavioural or biological effects on species living in the immediate vicinity, particularly those which are unable to move away.”

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According to Hu Zhenyu, environmental impact assessments for underwater data centres currently focus on the construction phase. The longer-term impacts of operation and decommissioning aren’t studied enough. More monitoring of the consequences of warmer temperatures for marine life is needed, he said.

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Transparency in the data centre industry has long been a problem. Eric Masanet is professor in emerging technologies and sustainable development at the University of California Santa Barbara. He said: “Most data centre operators don’t report on specific data centres or projects. This includes Amazon and Microsoft.”

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It’s not just China. Singapore, Korea and the US are among the countries looking at using seawater to cool data centres. In April this year, Korea’s ocean ministry announced a pilot project in the waters off the country’s industrial powerhouse, Ulsan.

Hu Zhenyu says underwater data centres are a new undertaking. The idea is still being explored and tested, and there are various questions to be answered before commerciality is achieved. However, those risks are played down in corporate communications, he says.

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Classic environmentalists making the acceptable the enemy of the clearly worse.

But in any case underwater data centres make zero sense. If you weren't already convinced by using your brain for 5 seconds, Microsoft proved this a decade or two ago.

If you want easy access to seawater just build it on the coast. There's a reason nuclear power stations are built on the coast and not underwater!

We've been using seawater as coolant in the industry for many, many decades. The impact is well understood. Does a datacenter produce as much heat as a nuclear reactor? How much thermal energy do they output?