"Embed" data centers deep in the sea for greener computing power

BEIJING, May 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from China.org.cn on Shanghai Lin-gang Underwater Data Center:

Off the east coast of Nanhuizui in Shanghai stands a 32-meter-tall steel cylinder in steady operation. For local residents and workers, every short video they scroll through, every online ride-hailing service they book, and every cross-border payment they make is computed right here, with nearly zero network latency.

This is no movie set for a sci-fi film, but the Shanghai Lin-gang Underwater Data Center (UDC) — the world's first wind-powered underwater data center, which was just recently put into official operation.

Data centers, simply put, are "super warehouses" in the digital world. Any data generated by our daily digital activities is stored in and processed by them, while their operations run entirely on electricity.

Adopting an offshore wind-power direct-supply model, the Shanghai Lin-gang UDC shares the same sea area with an offshore wind farm, allowing wind power to be directly supplied to the data center via a dedicated cable, much like building a house next to a power station. This avoids long-distance transmission, drastically cutting energy losses and operational costs. Thanks to this model, the direct supply rate of green power for the data center exceeds 95%.

Furthermore, traditional onshore data centers rely on massive freshwater resources and complex refrigeration equipment to cool servers. That means out of every 10 yuan spent on electricity, three to four yuan go solely to cooling rather than computing. By contrast, this UDC leverages seawater with an annual average temperature of 15℃ as a natural cooling system, saving enormous amounts of electricity and freshwater.

Power Usage Effectiveness, or PUE, is a core international metric to evaluate the energy efficiency of data centers, with a theoretical limit of 1.0, meaning every unit of electricity is dedicated to IT equipment such as servers. By combining offshore wind power and natural seawater cooling technologies, the PUE of the Shanghai Lin-gang UDC has already dropped below 1.15, cutting around 12,000 tons of carbon emissions annually.

A new green development path that integrates computing capacity building and electricity infrastructure is taking shape across China.

With the rapid evolution of AI, the number and scale of global data centers keep expanding, driving a surge in energy consumption. The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2030, electricity consumed by AI-related computing will account for over half of the electricity demand of newly established data centers. Thus, developing greener, low-carbon computing power has become an inevitable choice.

Well before 2019, China piloted the construction of green data centers; in 2021, China's "East Data, West Computing" initiative was officially launched. Vast amounts of data generated in China's densely populated eastern regions were redirected to western China, where abundant wind, solar, and hydropower resources support low-carbon computing, driving both computing power growth and environmental sustainability. In 2023, China for the first time proposed the concept of coordinating computing power development with electricity generation, and emphasized the construction of computing hubs close to end users, with the aim of further enhancing computing efficiency while cutting energy loss. The Shanghai Lin-gang UDC is a vivid representation of the commitment, turning out to be a fruitful exploration in China's years-long drive to advance green computing power.

It is worth noting that placing a data center in the sea is a project with few mature global references to follow. China's solution pioneers an approach of coordinated construction of offshore green power and undersea computing facilities. It innovatively designed a cylindrical "data warehouse" to withstand wave impacts and formulated special anti-corrosion coatings to resist seawater erosion. The endeavor demonstrates China's firm resolve to cut carbon emissions, while offering the world innovative solutions in the green transformation of data centers.

Along the shores of the East China Sea, this "Deep Blue Core" braves the torrents, and unfolding within is the future landscape of green computing power, painted by Lin-gang, Shanghai, and presented to the world.

"Embed" data centers deep in the sea for greener computing power
http://www.china.org.cn/video/2026-05/09/content_118485052.shtml 
China Mosaic
http://chinamosaic.china.com.cn/

SOURCE China.org.cn