In response to questions on its two-phase cooling merchandise from WIRED, together with whether or not or not the corporate deliberate to submit chemical substances for fast-tracked consideration beneath the administration’s new information middle exemption, Chemours spokesperson Cassie Olszewski stated the corporate is “within the means of commercializing our two-phase immersion cooling fluid, which would require related regulatory approvals.”
“Our work on this space has been targeted on growing extra sustainable and environment friendly cooling options that will permit information facilities to devour much less power, water, and footprint whereas successfully managing the growing quantity of warmth generated by the subsequent era of chips with increased processing energy,” Olszewski stated.
These chips may be a big supply of recent chemical substances. Each Schweer and Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a lawyer at environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, say that the semiconductor trade, which produces the chips that present the computing energy in information facilities, stands to realize considerably from the expedited evaluate course of. The semiconductor manufacturing course of makes use of ceaselessly chemical substances at a number of totally different factors of manufacturing, together with within the essential photolithography course of, which makes use of gentle to switch patterns to the floor of silicon wafers.
Schweer says that in his previous couple of years working on the EPA, this trade submitted a lot of functions for brand spanking new chemical substances. Kalmuss-Katz says that semiconductor producers “are a essential driver of recent chemical substances.”
“The administration has this type of AI-at-all-costs mindset, the place you’re dashing to construct an increasing number of information facilities and chip fabs with none significant plan for coping with their local weather impacts, their pure useful resource impacts, and the poisonous substances which can be getting used and launched from these new services,” he says.
Lobbying paperwork present that the semiconductor trade has been asking for adjustments this yr to the EPA’s new-chemicals program. In March, Nancy Beck, a former coverage director for an trade lobbyist group who now leads the Workplace of Chemical Security and Air pollution Prevention, the workplace that oversees new chemical evaluations, met with representatives from SEMI, a worldwide advocacy group for the trade. The assembly was initially organized to debate the “EPA’s method to rules on PFAS and different chemical substances which can be important to semiconductor manufacturing,” based on emails obtained by WIRED by way of a Freedom of Info Act request. Emails present that Beck advised in the course of the assembly that the lobbying group observe up with a public remark in assist of adjustments to the brand new chemical substances program, which the group despatched over the subsequent month in a letter. (“The Trump EPA encourages stakeholders to submit and doc their feedback on proposed guidelines in order that we get a various array of views,” says Hirsch, the EPA spokesperson.)
