We Should Build Datacenters ... in the Ocean?

In October 2025, China quietly achieved what many thought impossible: the world's first fully operational commercial underwater datacenter began serving clients off the coast of Shanghai. This isn't science fiction or a publicity stunt—it's a pragmatic response to one of the most pressing challenges facing our digital infrastructure. As artificial intelligence and cloud computing demands skyrocket, traditional datacenters are consuming roughly 200 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, generating immense heat, and competing with human populations for water resources in some of the world's driest regions. The ocean offers an elegant solution that we should embrace at scale.

The Evidence is Compelling

Microsoft's Project Natick, which ran from 2015 to 2024, provided rigorous empirical evidence that underwater datacenters aren't just feasible—they're superior to land-based facilities in critical ways. When Microsoft retrieved its Northern Isles datacenter from 117 feet below the surface off Scotland's Orkney Islands after two years of operation, the results were striking: servers in the underwater facility were eight times more reliable than those in a comparable land-based datacenter. The underwater environment, filled with inert nitrogen gas, eliminated the corrosion from oxygen and humidity that plagues traditional facilities. Temperature fluctuations were minimal, and there were no human bumps and jostles from technicians replacing components—all factors that contribute to equipment failure on land.

The energy efficiency metrics are equally impressive. Project Natick achieved a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) score of 1.07, remarkably close to the theoretical ideal of 1.0, where 1.0 means all energy goes directly to computing with zero waste. The average datacenter struggles along at 1.55. This translates to approximately 40% reduction in cooling energy consumption, simply by harnessing the ocean's natural thermal properties. When servers and cooling systems account for 43% of direct electricity use in conventional datacenters, these savings become transformative at scale.

Strategic Advantages Beyond Energy

The case for ocean datacenters extends beyond raw efficiency numbers. Half of the world's population lives within 200 kilometers of coastlines, making underwater facilities ideally positioned to reduce latency—the time it takes for data to travel between source and destination. This matters profoundly for real-time applications: gaming, video streaming, financial trading, and emerging AI services all benefit from milliseconds shaved off response times. A datacenter 200 kilometers away delivers data in 2 milliseconds per round trip; one 4,000 kilometers inland requires 40 milliseconds.

Ocean locations also enable direct integration with renewable energy sources. Offshore wind farms, tidal generators, and wave energy converters can power underwater datacenters without straining terrestrial electrical grids. Microsoft's Scottish deployment ran entirely on renewable energy from the Orkney Islands' wind, solar, and wave infrastructure. China's Shanghai facility is explicitly powered by offshore wind. This co-location of green energy generation and consumption represents a pathway toward truly carbon-neutral computing infrastructure.

Deployment speed offers another compelling advantage. Microsoft demonstrated that standardized underwater datacenter modules could go from factory to full operation in under 90 days. This manufacturing-and-deployment model enables rapid response to market demand in ways that conventional datacenter construction—which requires years and massive capital investment—simply cannot match.

Challenges Requiring Careful Management

Intellectual honesty demands acknowledging legitimate concerns. A 2024 peer-reviewed study published at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy by researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Electro-Communications revealed that underwater datacenters are vulnerable to acoustic attacks. Sound waves carried through dense water can target the resonant frequencies of hard drives, causing network crashes and even permanent hardware destruction. An off-the-shelf pool speaker tuned to five kilohertz could disrupt operations from 20 feet away. However, the same researchers developed machine learning algorithms that can detect such attacks before they cause crashes, and they've identified defensive strategies.

Environmental concerns merit serious consideration. Research published in 2022 raised questions about heat output during marine heat waves—periods when ocean temperatures are already elevated. The combination of naturally warmer water and datacenter thermal exhaust could reduce oxygen levels in surrounding water, potentially harming aquatic organisms. A 2024 study in Scientific Reports addressed this by proposing mobile underwater datacenter designs capable of migrating away from high-temperature zones or underwater seismic activity areas. Marine ecologist Dr. Gordon Watson of the University of Portsmouth has emphasized the importance of proper environmental impact assessments and marine spatial planning protocols before deployment.

China's Hainan facility underwent independent environmental assessment during its 2020-2023 testing phase in the Pearl River, with operators reporting temperature changes remained within acceptable limits. However, as one marine ecology expert noted, we need more long-term research on ecosystem impacts, particularly if these facilities scale to gigawatt levels.

The Path Forward

The fundamental question isn't whether underwater datacenters are perfect—no technology is. The question is whether they represent a better approach than the unsustainable trajectory we're currently on. The evidence suggests they do. With proper environmental monitoring, acoustic defenses, and thoughtful deployment strategies informed by marine spatial planning, ocean-based datacenters offer measurably superior reliability, energy efficiency, and renewable energy integration compared to conventional alternatives.

China is moving aggressively to deploy these systems at commercial scale. Other nations and companies should follow, not out of competitive pressure, but because the physics and economics make compelling sense. The ocean covers 70% of our planet's surface. It's time we used that resource intelligently to power the digital infrastructure our civilization depends upon—doing so more efficiently, reliably, and sustainably than ever before.