(The Center Square) - A Delaware-registered corporation has applied for a federal permit to study the development of an underwater AI data center campus in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, triggering pushback from blindsided state officials.
DeepGreen Cook Inlet SPV LLC filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a preliminary permit to study a data center campus located 45 feet to 166 feet below the surface that would be naturally cooled by ocean water and powered by 350 turbines driven by the tides.
In the application with federal regulators, DeepGreen stated the project is designed to tie in with the Alaska Energy Authority’s ongoing $400 million Cook Inlet PowerLink project, a 38-mile submarine transmission line planned between Nikiski and Beluga. If built, the company claims the subsea campus would serve as a primary renewable energy source and stabilizing force on the region’s electrical grid.
Curtis Thayer, Chief Executive Officer of the Alaska Energy Authority, which is overseeing the Cook Inlet PowerLink project, told the Anchorage Daily News his organization had never been contacted by DeepGreen and he added the company’s regulatory filing had the facts “dead wrong.”
DeepGreen managing member Louis Wolfson told the Anchorage Daily News that the subsea data centers his company is studying can bypass many of the water and cooling needs of traditional, land-based AI facilities.
“The basic concept is straightforward: land-based data centers face major constraints because they take up large plots of real estate, strain local power grids, and consume millions of gallons of fresh water daily for cooling,” said Wolfson.
A separate subsidiary, Deep Green Western Passage SPV, is studying the development of a similar subsea data center in Maine’s Bay of Fundy, where local resistance recently led the Eastport City Council to enact a unanimous six-month moratorium on construction. Maine’s fishing industry and lobstermen have objected to the underwater project with concerns about the effects on the region’s marine ecosystem.
The Eastport Coalition for Healthy Oceans, a citizen group leading local opposition to the data center project study, challenges DeepGreen’s environmental claims. In a letter of opposition sent to federal regulators, Nathan Curtis, an Eastport landowner, solar farm operator, and aquaculture employee, said the scale of the DeepGreen’s underwater facility would create severe environmental hazards.
“Computing ‘hives’ of the scale proposed require continuous ocean cooling,” Curtis wrote in the letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Curtis said the heat from the proposed data center could cause “unmitigated risks of thermal pollution” for Maine’s marine environment.
On Wednesday, federal regulators accepted Deep Green Western Passage’s filing for a preliminary permit to study a $100 million underwater data center that would cover about 27 acres in the Bay of Fundy at depths of approximately 150 feet to 400 feet.
Federal regulators had required DeepGreen to revise its initial application for the Maine project after several administrative omissions occurred. In a deficiency letter to the developer, the commission noted that DeepGreen had failed to provide the dimensions of the proposed subsea infrastructure and that local tribes and municipalities within a 15-mile radius of the proposed project had not been contacted.
China is the only country known to operate AI data centers offshore. Microsoft launched Project Natick off the coast of Scotland in 2018 to test the performance and reliability of underwater server farms, which the company hailed as a success. The company retrieved the servers in 2020 for analysis and reportedly canceled the project in 2024, according to Data Center Dynamics, a media organization that reports on data center infrastructure.