I'd imagine the optics of this have changed with the recent focus on ocean surface temps. I would also bet the negative PR of pumping waste heat directly into cold climates would offset any savings.
The heat we directly dump into the environment, except where it affects the local ecosystem directly (e.g. warm rivers killing local wildlife, algae blooms) is a quite laughable portion of the global warming problem - greenhouse gases are multiple orders of magnitude more effective (at being part of the problem).
Oceans are insanely large (citation needed) heat sinks.
> Oceans are insanely large (citation needed) heat sinks.
If my math is right (hopefully), and assuming there's no cooling (hopefully not), it would take 790 billion years for Microsoft's datacenter to raise the temperature of the ocean by 1 degree.
I think it is disingenuous to pretend that I am making an argument on logistical, thermodynamic, oceanographic, etc. grounds. I claimed one thing - bad optics, bad public relations.
Sea surface temps are in the environmentalist spotlight at the moment. Between when Microsoft started their pilot program in 2018 and now, surface temps have changed dramatically. Some experts believe this change has made storms more energetic and less predictable.
Salt-water cooled power plants along with desalination plants have been getting pushback from environmentalists for years because of the negative effects of their heated effluent. This will only intensify.
For Microsoft, public relations have a documented cost. My claim is that their PR team would say that right now the cost of a large phase II deployment would outweigh the savings.
If it was that big a deal, they would channel the waste heat to useful purposes such as heating nearby homes for free. The marketing benefits are obvious.
That'd be great. The Volts podcast just had an episode about district heating. Data centers were among the list of readily available heat sources. Also reduces the data center's cooling costs. Win/win.