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Samsung is building floating data centers on ships, and it's already got regulatory approval
(www.techspot.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2026
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Makes infinitely more sense than in space.
Power, maintainence, and cooling all seem easier
Honestly, if it was mandated that data centers are only allowed to use renewable energy, this wouldn't be too bad.
Would waste heat go into the air or water? What affects could that have?
I'm more worried about the sound pollution. Sound travels so much farther underwater and things like sonar are god awful for marine life. I can only noise reduction will not be prioritized when building these things quickly.
If the electricity comes from renewable sources, it is no (global) problem. In that case, you've just taken the sun's energy from one place (solar panel, wind turbine, etc.) and moved it elsewhere (the ocean). That's fine, that energy was going to end up heating the Earth in any case.
This is very different from greenhouse gas emissions, as those increase the total amount of energy the sun delivers to Earth, changing the global balance.
It would go into the water, and it would have basically no effect at all.
The amount of heat is many orders of magnitude too low to heat the oceans up.
As long as you don't park in very shallow waters where it would have a local effect.
Isn't this the attitude that got us climate change in the first place?
True. But the scale is still a bit different:
Climate change added 400 ZJ of heat energy to the oceans so far.
If we piped the heat of all datacenters that currently exist into the oceans, that would add 0.001 ZJ per year.
The major issue (for global warming, not local warming) isn't waste heat, it's greenhouse gasses.
Heating the oceans globally would require insane and totally unrealistic scale, but the effect on ecosystem on the immediate surroundings is a good question.
A single ship? Ye, no impact.
Thousands? Well, that will be very noticeable.
I'd probably be more concerned with them using bunker b or c for power generation.
Came here for this comment. The image is suspiciously free of smokestacks.
But still less than just letting it sit on a shoreline.
Except if you want to be in international waters, far away from pesky laws an stuff.