The world as we know it faces a severe threat from global warming. In November 2019, 11,000 scientists signed a warning on the effects of climate change, stating that the world “must quickly implement massive energy efficiency and conservation practices and must replace fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables”. Vital to our argument is that these words relate to both energy-saving measures and to energy production.

This paper shows how a large actor in energy consumption – datacenters – can work together with a promising technology in renewable, marine, energy – ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) technology – to decrease the CO2 footprint of mankind while enabling sustainable growth.