Related: AI Is Heading For an Energy Crisis That Has Tech Giants Scrambling<\/a><\/p>\n “Underwater operations have inherent advantages,” said Yang Ye of maritime equipment firm Highlander, which is developing the Shanghai pod with state-owned construction companies.<\/p>\n Undersea servers are kept at a low temperature by ocean currents, rather than the energy-intensive air cooling or water evaporation required by centers on land.<\/p>\n The technology was trialled by Microsoft<\/a> off the coast of Scotland in 2018, but the Chinese project, to be sunk in mid-October, is one of the world’s first commercial services of its kind.<\/p>\n It will serve clients such as China Telecom and a state-owned AI computing company, and is part of a broader government push to lower data centers’ carbon footprint.<\/p>\n “Underwater facilities can save approximately 90 percent of energy consumption for cooling,” Yang, vice president of Highlander, told AFP.<\/p>\n Projects like this are currently focused on showing “technological feasibility”, said expert Shaolei Ren from the University of California, Riverside.<\/p>\n Microsoft never built commercially on its trial, saying after retrieving its pod in 2020 that the project had been successfully completed.<\/p>\n Significant construction challenges and environmental concerns have to be overcome before underwater data centers can be deployed on a mass scale, said Ren.<\/p>\n In China, government subsidies are helping \u2013 Highlander received 40 million yuan ($5.62 million) for a similar 2022 project in Hainan province<\/a> that is still running.<\/p>\n Technical challenges<\/p>\n “The actual completion of the underwater data center involved greater construction challenges than initially expected,” said Zhou Jun, an engineer for Highlander’s Shanghai project.<\/p>\n Built onshore in separate components before being installed in the sea, it will draw nearly all its power from nearby offshore wind farms.<\/p>\n Highlander says that more than 95 percent of the energy used will come from renewable sources.<\/p>\n The most obvious challenge in placing the structure under the waves is keeping its contents dry and safe from corrosion by salt water.<\/p>\n The Chinese project addresses this by using a protective coating containing glass flakes on the steel capsule that holds the servers.<\/p>\n To allow maintenance crews access, an elevator will connect the main pod structure to a segment that remains above the water.<\/p>\n Ren from UC Riverside said<\/a> laying the internet connection between an offshore data center and the mainland was a more complex process than with traditional land servers.<\/p>\n Researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Electro-Communications in Japan have also found that submarine data centers can be vulnerable to attacks using sound waves conducted through water.<\/p>\n Technical hurdles aside, the warming effect of underwater data centers on the surrounding water has raised questions about the impact on marine ecosystems<\/a>.<\/p>\n Andrew Want, a marine ecologist at the University of Hull, said the heat emitted could in some cases attract certain species while driving away others.<\/p>\n “These are unknowns at this point \u2013 there’s not sufficient research being conducted yet,” he said.<\/p>\n Highlander told AFP a 2020 independent assessment of the company’s test project near Zhuhai, in southern China, indicated that the surrounding water stayed well below acceptable temperature thresholds.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Chinas-Undersea-Data-Center-Being-Constructed.jpg\")
An underwater data centre being developed by Chinese maritime technology company Highlander is seen under construction at a shipyard in Nantong, in China’s eastern Jingsu province on September 11, 2025. (STR\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759717148_405_0.jpg\")
frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>Ecological unknowns<\/p>\n