Can underwater data centers ease AI’s environmental toll?

(TNND) — China is now operating an underwater data center, powered by the wind and submerged about six miles off the coast of Shanghai.

The $226 million data center, reportedly built by HiCloud Technology in partnership with the Chinese government, follows in the footsteps of Microsoft’s Project Natick.

From 2018 to 2020, Microsoft tested the reliability of a shipping-container-size data center 117 feet deep off the coast of Scotland.

Microsoft determined the underwater data center was a feasible concept, though a Microsoft spokesperson told The National News Desk via email Tuesday that the company doesn’t currently have any data centers in the water.

The Microsoft spokesperson went on to say that the company will “continue to use Project Natick as a research platform to explore, test, and validate new concepts around datacenter reliability and sustainability.”

China has said its 24-megawatt data center was designed to reduce power consumption by close to 23%, with the wind generating “green” electricity. China said its data center will reduce water and land use by 100% and over 90%, respectively.

The global AI market is expanding rapidly, projected to grow from $189 billion to nearly $5 trillion between 2023 and 2033, according to a June report from the United Nations University.

But the report shone a light on a litany of environmental concerns over data centers. Aside from land usage, a great deal of electricity and water is used for powering and cooling the rows and rows of servers contained within data centers.

United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health researchers found that global data centers consumed an estimated 448 terawatt-hours of electricity last year. If data centers were a nation, they would be the world’s 11th largest electricity consumer, behind France and ahead of Saudi Arabia, the UNU-INWEH said.

And the report estimated that the water demands to keep powering artificial intelligence data centers will equal the water needs of 1.3 billion people by 2030.

So, can underwater data centers solve the environmental and resource challenges ahead?

Eric Masanet, an expert in data centers and climate change mitigation, said it’s too early to tell.

“There haven’t been many underwater deployments globally to date, so we don’t have much empirical data,” said Masanet, a professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara.

Underwater data centers could reduce the electricity needed to cool servers by using the surrounding water in a “once-through” cooling system, he said. In that process, cool water is continuously pumped through a heat exchanger that absorbs heat from the servers before returning the warmed water to the surrounding body of water. Masanet said once-through cooling is widely used at power plants because it can remove large amounts of heat efficiently.

The China data center is also leveraging wind power.

Masanet said simply switching to renewable energy won’t save any electricity at the data center, but carbon savings could be substantial if switching from fossil fuel-based power to renewable power.

And if the wind-power generation is right there at the data center, there could be energy savings due to reduced transmission and distribution system losses. The shorter the distance the electricity has to travel, the lower the transmission losses, he said.

On the flip side, underwater data centers have the potential to harm marine ecosystems, but Masanet said more study is needed to weigh the pros and cons.

The underwater data centers are designed to be maintenance-free for long periods, given the costs and difficulties of upkeep. So, sea life might not be disturbed by constant work at the site.

But Masanet noted concerns over thermal pollution, noise and vibration, and other negative impacts on the underwater environment.

In theory, as long as the water body is large enough, with enough natural mixing and cooling, underwater data centers should technically work in both saltwater and freshwater bodies. And with responsible site selection and design, Masanet said the heat gain and hot spots within the surrounding water could be minimized.

Masanet said noise and vibration could be an issue, though he again pointed to a deficit of available data.

“I would say that those issues need serious study, given what we already know about the effects of vibrations from ships on whales, for example, especially if the number of undersea data centers starts growing rapidly,” he said via email.

Masanet said underwater data centers aren’t likely to replace data centers on land, which offer benefits such as easy access for tenants and reduced latency by being close to population centers.