China Focus: China completes world's first wind-powered underwater data center

SHANGHAI, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday completed construction of the world's first wind-powered underwater data center (UDC) project in east China's Shanghai Municipality, setting a benchmark in terms of the green development of computing infrastructure.

Located in the Lin-gang Special Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, this UDC project received an investment of 1.6 billion yuan (about 226 million U.S. dollars) and has a total power capacity of 24 megawatts, according to the administrative committee of the Lin-gang Special Area.

The administrative committee said the completion of this initiative marks a breakthrough in the integrated development of UDC projects and offshore renewable energy. It provides a concrete example of green and low-carbon development of computing infrastructure and local consumption of offshore wind power on a demonstration scale.

Compared to traditional land-based data centers, the underwater project is designed to use over 95 percent green electricity -- reducing power consumption by 22.8 percent, and water and land use by 100 percent and more than 90 percent, respectively, said Su Yang, general manager of Shanghai Hicloud Technology, which is one of the project contractors.

Su also noted that energy consumption for cooling in conventional data centers accounts for roughly 40 to 50 percent of total energy consumption. By leveraging seawater as a natural cooling system -- this UDC can reduce the proportion to below 10 percent.

The entire project will be constructed in two phases. Phase one, now completed, was designed to achieve a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of no higher than 1.15, which represents an advanced industry level. PUE is a measure of how efficiently a data center uses its power. The lower the PUE, the greener the data center.

Based on a green development policy for data centers issued by the Chinese government in 2024 -- all new or retrofitted large and mega data centers should achieve PUE below 1.25 by the end of 2025. For data center projects in national hub nodes, the PUE standard is no higher than 1.2.

Wu Xiaohua, deputy secretary of the Party committee of the Lin-gang Special Area, said the completion of the data center is a milestone for Lin-gang in integrating the digital economy, new energy and the marine economy. It also represents a major initiative by Shanghai in serving national strategies and building a global hub for sci-tech innovation.

As an economic hub in east China's coastal region, Shanghai is developing its intelligent computing industry. According to measures released by the Shanghai municipal government in March 2025, the city aims to grow its intelligent computing cloud industry scale to over 200 billion yuan by 2027 -- with a targeted computing capacity of 200 EFLOPS.

These measures also outlined plans to deploy intelligent computing capacity and expand cluster scales in key areas such as Lin-gang.

Huang Dinan, chairman of Shenergy Group, another project contractor, said the East China Sea provides Shanghai with unique offshore wind power resources, as annual utilization hours exceed 3,000 hours -- thus supplying stable and green electricity for the city's economy and residents.

This innovation integrates offshore wind power with subsea computing systems -- achieving efficient resource coordination across power generation, grid and load, while matching the data center's requirements for green electricity, Huang said.

On Tuesday, Shanghai Hicloud Technology, Shenergy Group, the Shanghai branch of China Telecom, INESA and China Communications Construction Company's Third Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd. all signed an agreement to cooperate in launching a 500-megawatt offshore wind-powered UDC project.

"Construction of UDCs is still in its initial stage. To achieve the transition from demonstration projects to large-scale application, progress is still required in terms of technological maturity and cost optimization," said Wang Shifeng, chairman of Third Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd.

He added that the company will focus on breakthroughs in core technologies for far-shore computing infrastructure, optimization of operation and maintenance, and green low-carbon upgrades.

Building green computing facilities near the east China economic hub is an innovative move and provides a valuable addition to the country's national computing network.

China in 2022 launched a mega data project to accelerate the development of an integrated national computing network. Dubbed the "East Data, West Computing" initiative, it is designed to see less-developed inland regions storing and processing data transmitted from the country's economically vibrant eastern areas. ■