In response to WIRED’s questions about two-phase cooling products, including whether the company plans to submit the chemicals for expedited consideration under the administration’s modern data center waiver, Chemours spokeswoman Cassie Olszewski said the company “is in the process of commercializing our two-phase immersion cooling fluid, which will require appropriate regulatory approvals.”
“Our work in this area has focused on developing more sustainable and efficient cooling solutions that would allow data centers to use less energy, water and footprint, while effectively managing the increasing amount of heat generated by the next generation of chips with greater processing power,” Olszewski said.
These chips can also be a significant source of modern chemicals. Both Schweer and Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, say the semiconductor industry, which produces chips that provide computing power in data centers, could greatly benefit from an expedited review process. The semiconductor manufacturing process continually uses chemicals at many different points of production, including the key process of photolithography, in which lithe transfers patterns to the surface of silicon wafers.
Schweer says the industry has submitted a huge number of modern chemical applications over the past few years at EPA. Kalmuss-Katz says semiconductor makers “are a major driver of new chemicals.”
“The administration is pursuing an AI-at-all-costs approach in which it is rushing to build more and more data centers and chip factories without any meaningful plan to deal with their impact on the climate, natural resources, and toxic substances that are being used and released from these new facilities,” he says.
Lobbying documents show the semiconductor industry has pushed for changes to the EPA’s modern chemicals program this year. In March, Nancy Beck, former policy director of an industry lobbying group who now heads the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, the office that oversees modern chemical reviews, met with representatives from SEMI, a global industry advocacy organization. According to emails obtained by WIRED through a Freedom of Information Act request, the meeting was initially organized to discuss “EPA’s approach to regulating PFAS and other chemicals essential to semiconductor production.” The emails show Beck suggested during the meeting that the lobbying group submit public comment supporting changes to the modern chemicals program, which the group submitted in a letter within the next month. (“Trump EPA encourages interested parties to submit and document their comments on the proposed regulations so that we can obtain a diverse range of perspectives,” says Hirsch, the EPA spokesman).