Reports: Trump administration weighs four underwater datacenters off Maine, Alaska

Reported U.S. proposal and Great Lakes advance-regulation request

Recent reports indicate that the Trump administration is considering four proposed underwater, sealed-pod datacenters off Maine and Alaska. No underwater datacenter project is currently proposed for the Great Lakes, but the Lake Erie Foundation has contacted lawmakers in New York, Ohio and Michigan to discuss regulations before developers submit proposals.

Reported plan, existing projects and permit status

The Guardian reported that two underwater datacenters are already in operation off the coast of China. A Guardian photograph showed maritime technology company Highlander developing an underwater datacenter at a shipyard in Nantong, Jiangsu province, on 11 September 2025.

Elon Musk has often touted putting datacenters in space, but reports cited by The Guardian said another geographic area may soon become a widespread target: lakes and oceans. At a campaign rally in Ohio last month, Donald Trump said of datacenters: “There’s so much money to be made for Ohio … they’ll go to China … we want them.”

No underwater datacenter project is currently proposed for the Great Lakes. A spokesperson for Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency said the agency had not received any applications to permit an underwater datacenter in its part of Lake Erie.

A Microsoft project set up off the coast of northern Scotland in 2018 found that after two years, server failures were reduced by 87% compared with on-land datacenter equivalents. Microsoft executives saw the project, which ended after two years, as an unmitigated success. A Microsoft spokesperson said: “We have no plans to deploy an underwater datacenter in any location at this time,” and: “Our focus today is on building and operating datacenters responsibly on land.”

Lake Erie Foundation seeks advance state rules

The Lake Erie Foundation, a non-profit based in Ohio, has contacted state representatives and state senators in New York, Ohio and Michigan to discuss the issue. John Lipaj said the group wants Great Lakes states to consider regulations before datacenter developers make their proposals.

“Whether or not they happen, [we’re saying] let’s propose to state legislatures in Great Lakes states that they consider that this may be coming down the line and let’s get some regulations in place before the datacenter developers make their proposals and then state legislators are scrambling. That’s what we’re trying to avoid. We’re exercising an abundance of caution,” Lipaj said. “The Great Lakes states should take some leadership in this, get the regulations written so that nothing is forced on them.”

The foundation’s position is that states should be prepared rather than surprised by a proposal, given the ecological stakes. No underwater datacenter project is currently proposed for the region.

According to The Guardian, the floor of Lake Erie on the US side falls under Ohio’s jurisdiction. Ohio’s state government, where Republicans hold a supermajority, previously proposed a law making it easier for datacenter companies to discharge wastewater into public waterways. The state EPA denied that measure last July following a public outcry. Of the eight US Great Lakes states, only New York currently has a temporary statewide moratorium on datacenter construction, and it ends in mid-2027.

Environmental and engineering questions remain

The Guardian reported that underwater iterations can largely avoid siting conflicts involving datacenters in residential areas on land and, in theory, could significantly reduce utility costs. That makes the cool, salt-free waters of the Great Lakes, home to 30 million people in major cities such as Chicago, Toronto and Detroit, potentially attractive to datacenter companies.

The Guardian also reported that the environmental consequences of a similar project in the freshwater Great Lakes could be significant and that local environmental advocates have raised concerns. Tens of millions of people who live around the lakes depend on them for drinking water every day. “We are concerned because if you think about what a datacenter does, it throws off a lot of heat,” Lipaj said. “Lake Erie already has an issue with harmful algal blooms, and they develop because of heat, not only because of fertilizers and agricultural runoff.”

“We’re also concerned about the possibility of contamination and leaks. These have not been around a long time,” Lipaj said. “We are concerned about the types of fluid contained in a datacenter, the batteries and electrical equipment. These are all things that could lead to a catastrophic failure that we don’t want happening in the Great Lakes.”

Lake Erie is home or close to major cities such as Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo, and it is by far the warmest of the five Great Lakes during summer months. The lake ranks as one of the most polluted large lakes in the country, in large part because of agricultural runoff in its western basin, and a number of fish species are under threat because of its warming trend.

“Warm water can impact aquatic life and ecosystems in a number of ways. One immediate effect is what is known as a thermal shock,” said Helena Volzer of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, an environmental group based in Chicago. “Aquatic organisms are highly sensitive to temperature changes, and even a small, rapid increase of just 2-5F can be dramatic for the aquatic ecosystem. When a facility releases warm water, it can alter metabolism and increase oxygen demand, reduce dissolved oxygen availability, disrupt food webs [and] force fish to move away from preferred habitats.”

A spokesperson for the federal Environmental Protection Agency said: “The EPA supports development of data center infrastructure that is essential to remaining the world leader in Super Intelligence while using its statutory authorities to protect water quality.”

On 3 November, residents of Conneaut, a Lake Erie community of about 12,000 people an hour’s drive north-east of Cleveland, voted in favor of a charter amendment to prohibit the construction of large datacenters in the area. “Being one of the largest freshwater sources in the world, I would be very much for protecting that resource,” said Mariana Branch, a Conneaut council member who lives a short distance from the Lake Erie shoreline. Branch said she had not previously been aware of the idea of datacenters operating underwater. “Technology is moving so quickly, it’s difficult for cities to keep up with,” she said.

The Great Lakes also present engineering questions. Last winter saw one of the most extensive Great Lakes freeze-ups in decades, with almost all of Lake Erie and up to half of the four other lakes freezing over up to several feet deep. Experts say it is not clear to what extent ice cover could affect underwater projects.

Some people cited by The Guardian said following Microsoft’s lead in Scotland may offer a useful model for placing datacenters away from residential land sites. They also noted that, unlike the open ocean, the Great Lakes ecosystems have no large fauna.

“They require a lot of energy for cooling … one of the biggest advantages of these underwater datacenters is the low cooling cost [associated]. They don’t have to spend a lot to cool the servers,” said Nir Kshetri, a professor of emerging technologies at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. “Datacenters have been a big issue for communities and in the recent elections. Also, datacenters don’t have to worry about any latency problems because they can be located close to large population centers where they are needed. A lake is a great place to do a datacenter. Cold water is even better.”