The project is environmentally sustainable in other ways. More than 95 percent of its electricity comes from offshore wind turbines. Overall, the designers estimate that this reduces energy consumption by 22.8 percent. Huang Dinan, president of Shenergy Group, another of the project’s contractors, noted that the East China Sea offers unique offshore wind resources with more than 3,000 hours of annual utilization. Land usage is reduced by more than 90 percent, a major factor in densely populated coastal cities like Shanghai, and the need for fresh water is eliminated entirely.
From East to West
The UDC is not an isolated effort. As part of a broader national strategy in China, Shanghai aims to become a global center of scientific and technological innovation by growing its cloud computing industry to more than RMB 200 billion (approximately $28.25 billion) by 2027.
This initiative also complements—and perhaps offers an alternative to—the “East Data, West Computing” megaproject, which launched in 2022. That project seeks to build data centers in China’s less developed, western regions to process data generated by coastal economic centers to the east. Lin-gang’s UDC, on the other hand, processes data close to where it is generated, while using marine resources to mitigate negative environmental impacts.
The Winds of Change
The UDC’s 24-megawatts capacity is just the beginning. During the announcement for the project, the main contractors, including Shanghai Hicloud Technology, Shenergy Group, the Shanghai branch of China Telecom and INESA, signed a new agreement to launch another offshore wind-powered UDC project with a much more ambitious goal: 500 megawatts.
However, the transition from proof-of-concept projects to large-scale application presents significant challenges. “UDC construction is still in its early stage,” cautioned Wang Shifeng, president of Third Harbor Engineering, another company involved in the current project. Wang stressed that for broader deployment, operation and maintenance optimization, as well as technological reliability, must be achieved first.
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.