The Trump Administration’s Data Center Push Could Open the Door for New Forever Chemicals
In response to questions about its two-phase cooling products from WIRED, including whether or not the company plans to submit chemicals for expedited review under the administration’s new exemption for data centers, Chemours spokeswoman Cassie Olszewski said the company is “in the process of commercializing our two-phase immersion cooling fluid, which will require the relevant regulatory approvals.”
“Our work in this area has focused on developing more sustainable and efficient cooling solutions that would enable data centers to consume less energy, water and environmental footprint while effectively managing the increasing amount of heat generated by the next generation of chips with higher processing power,” Olszewski said.
These chips could also be an important source of new chemicals. Schweer and Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit, say the semiconductor industry, which produces the chips that provide computing power in data centers, has much to gain from the expedited review process. The semiconductor manufacturing process uses chemicals constantly at multiple points of production, including in the crucial process of photolithography, which uses light to transfer patterns to the surface of silicon wafers.
Schweer says that during his last years working at the EPA, that industry submitted a large number of applications for new chemicals. Kalmuss-Katz says semiconductor manufacturers “are one of the main drivers of new chemicals.”
“The administration has this kind of AI-at-all-costs mindset, where you rush to build more and more data centers and chip factories without any meaningful plan to deal with their climate impacts, their impacts on natural resources, and the toxic substances that are used and released by these new facilities,” he says.
Lobbying documents show the semiconductor industry requested changes to the EPA’s new chemicals program this year. In March, Nancy Beck, the former political director of an industry lobbying group who now heads the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, the office that oversees reviews of new chemicals, met with representatives of SEMI, a global industry advocacy organization. The meeting was initially organized to discuss “the EPA’s approach to regulating PFAS and other chemicals critical to semiconductor manufacturing,” according to emails obtained by WIRED through a Freedom of Information Act request. The emails show that Beck suggested during the meeting that the lobbying group follow up with a public comment in support of changes to the new chemicals program, which the group sent the following month in a letter. (“The Trump EPA encourages stakeholders to submit and document their comments on the proposed rules so that we get a broad range of views,” said Hirsch, the EPA spokesperson.)
