World's 1st wind-powered underwater data center launched in China

China has officially launched the world’s first commercial, wind-powered underwater data center off the coast of Shanghai, taking a massive leap forward in the race to green the AI boom.

Located about 6 miles offshore in the Lingang Special Area, the subsea facility boasts a 24-megawatt capacity—enough to power 20,000 homes. The joint project between HiCloud Technology and China Communications Construction went fully operational in May, tackling one of tech's biggest crises: the massive energy and water demands of artificial intelligence, News.Az reports, citing Anadolu Agency.

Data centers require colossal amounts of energy, mostly to keep servers from overheating. A recent UN report warned that global data center water consumption could hit 9.3 trillion liters annually by 2030 due to AI growth.

China’s solution? Ditch traditional air conditioning altogether. The Lingang facility seals its server pods on the seabed and circulates natural seawater through copper pipes to cool them. This completely eliminates the need for freshwater and slashes electricity use, while offshore wind turbines provide the power.

While Microsoft famously pioneered this concept with its "Project Natick" experiment in Scotland between 2018 and 2020, the tech giant ultimately abandoned the project in 2024, citing scaling challenges. China, however, has successfully brought the concept to commercial reality to feed Shanghai’s booming AI, autonomous vehicle, and biotech industries. By placing the servers right off the coast, the facility delivers ultra-fast, low-latency computing power directly to the city’s tech hubs.

Chinese engineers believe this wind-and-water model could reshape the future of sustainable AI infrastructure globally.

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada