In response to questions about its two-phase cooling products from WIRED, including whether the company planned to submit chemicals for expedited consideration under the administration’s new data center exemption, Chemours spokeswoman Cassie Olszewski said the company is “in the process of commercializing our two-phase immersion cooling fluid, which will require relevant regulatory approvals.”
“Our work in this area is focused on developing more sustainable and efficient cooling solutions that will enable data centers to consume less energy, water and footprint, while effectively managing the increasing amount of heat generated by the next generation of chips with higher processing power,” said Olszewski.
These chips can also be an important source of new chemicals. Both Schweer and Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a lawyer with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, say the semiconductor industry, which makes the chips that power the computing power in data centers, could benefit significantly from the expedited review process. The semiconductor manufacturing process is forever using chemicals at several different production points, including in the important photolithography process, which uses light to transfer patterns to the surface of silicon wafers.
Schweer says that industry has submitted a large number of applications for new chemicals to the EPA in its last few years. Kalmuss-Katz says that semiconductor manufacturers are “the main driver 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 fabs without any meaningful plan to deal with their climate impacts, their natural resource impacts, and the toxic substances that are used and released from these new facilities,” he says.
Lobbying documents show that the semiconductor industry has asked for changes this year to the EPA’s new-chemicals program. In March, Nancy Beck, a former policy director for an industry lobbying group who now leads the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, the office that oversees new chemical reviews, met with representatives of SEMI, a global industry advocacy organization. The meeting was initially arranged to discuss the “EPA’s approach to regulations on PFAS and other chemicals essential to semiconductor manufacturing,” according to emails obtained by WIRED via a Freedom of Information Act request. 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 in a letter over the next month. (“The Trump EPA encourages stakeholders to submit and document their comments on proposed rules so we get a diverse array of perspectives,” said Hirsch, the EPA spokesman.)