‘Forever chemicals' industry aims to capitalize on AI boom

Chemical giant Chemours is pushing to expand production of 'forever chemicals' to meet surging demand for semiconductor chips, used in everything from smartphones to cars to data centers.
But the factories that support a product key to onshoring those chips' supply chains are linked to growing trails of contamination, spurring concerns about whether Chemours can scale up without releasing more toxic pollutants.
Chemours has proposed increasing operations at its Fayetteville, North Carolina, plant to support semiconductors, hydrogen energy and other industries, the company says. At its other plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia, the company plans to open a third production line for Teflon, which it says is critical for the booming artificial intelligence industry.
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The expansion plans are raising alarms over whether the spread of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, could be a consequence of the world's growing reliance on semiconductors, especially as AI takes off.
Prized for their extreme stability and durability, human-made PFAS have been used for years to make firefighting gear, plastic packaging, pharmaceuticals and semiconductor chips.
Demand for those chips is now surging with the rise of AI, powered by a growing number of energy-intensive, hyperscale data centers. Unlike some other uses of PFAS, semiconductors are currently impossible to make without the substances, said Andrew Chien, a computer science professor at the University of Chicago and former vice president of research of Intel.
'They're used in a sequential fashion in the processing of the chips,' Chien said. 'We can become more efficient about it, but it's not obvious how we transition away from [PFAS].'
Chemours isn't the only chemical company hoping to cash in. The Japanese company Daikin, which operates a large factory in Decatur, Alabama, will focus this year on selling materials for 'AI semiconductor manufacturing equipment' and forecasts strong demand from the data center sector, it said in a presentation to investors last month.
Chemours aims to enter another part of the data center market as well. It's developing chemical fluids marketed as a less energy-intensive way to cool computer systems housed in the warehouse-like buildings.
'Our work in this area has been focused on developing more sustainable and efficient solutions that would allow data centers to consume less energy and water, and reduce their space footprint,' company spokesperson Jess Loizeaux said in a statement to POLITICO's E&E News.
Both the Parkersburg and the Fayetteville factories have a long history of polluting the surrounding environment with PFAS, which accumulate in water and soil and are linked to cancer, reduced fertility, kidney damage and other human health problems.
EPA is working to propose a wastewater pollution rule that could force Chemours and other PFAS manufacturers to better control their pollution. Some observers are skeptical, given the presence of former chemical industry lobbyists at the agency and the fact that the Trump administration withdrew a pending Biden-era regulation on the issue in January.
Regulators in North Carolina continue to discover more PFAS tied to Chemours' plant, which began operating in 1971 and was owned by DuPont until 2015.
'It took a court-enforceable consent order to get Chemours to clean up their air and water emissions in North Carolina,' said Elizabeth Biser, former head of the state's Department of Environmental Quality. 'At this point, that one facility has contaminated 10 counties in our state, which is the vast majority of the southeastern part of the state.'
Expansion triggers concern: 'We think it's a terrible idea'
While it's impossible to verify what industries are driving Chemours' expansions, PFAS manufacturers have made the case that they're essential to winning the AI race and making semiconductors in the U.S. — a priority for both the Trump and Biden administrations.
Late in the Biden administration, there was even talk at the Commerce Department of giving chemical makers funding from the Chips and Science Act, said Zachary Schafer, a former senior official in EPA's water office. EPA, however, expressed concerns.
'We had said that we'd want to make sure that under any circumstances, and especially if the federal government was funding these facilities and manufacturing lines, they were going forward with environmental controls,' Schafer said.
Chemours' plant in West Virginia is the only one nationwide that makes Teflon, which is essential for semiconductor manufacturing, Loizeaux said. The company's North Carolina plant supports that production, in addition to making plastic film used by semiconductors and many other industries.
The Fayetteville Works plant where Chemours manufactures PFAS. | Gerry Broome/AP
The Semiconductor PFAS Consortium, an industry trade group, describes fluoropolymers as uniquely suited to their needs. Akin to a highly stable plastic, fluoropolymers possess a combination of 'chemical inertness, heat resistance, lack of particle shedding or metal leaching, processability, and other attributes required to meet rigorous requirements' for making the chips, the trade group says on its website.
Every factory in the U.S. and Europe that makes fluoropolymers 'seems to have contaminated the surroundings' with PFAS used to make them, said Rainer Lohmann, an oceanography professor at the University of Rhode Island who studies the pollutants.
'It's certainly possible to be much cleaner, but it's nothing you can control 100 percent,' Lohmann said. 'You can understand why a community that's been exposed for decades is reluctant to see them ramp up production.'
Chemours' expansion of its Fayetteville plant is 'emissions neutral' with respect to PFAS, according to Loizeaux. It involves doubling the capacity of some manufacturing processes, per the company's permit application.
'The design plans for the expansion include the installation of additional, already-proven emissions control technologies to minimize emissions,' Loizeaux said. 'Initial calculations project that the added abatement measures may result in a slight decrease in air emissions from the site.'
But Kelly Moser, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center based in North Carolina, said Chemours' permit materials indicates that PFAS air emissions could increase by 20 percent. Those air emissions have been shown to pollute rainwater, which then deposits PFAS into groundwater, sometimes many miles away, Moser said.
The permit application lists 19 different PFAS that could be released at higher levels if the plan moves forward, but Moser suspects there could be more. The family of chemicals includes thousands of known substances.
'We think it's a terrible idea, despite Chemours' claims that it needs to expand operations for additional demand for semiconductors and other technology applications,' she said.
For years, Chemours' emissions of one type of PFAS, GenX, were largely unbeknownst to regulators and the general public. That was before news broke in 2017 that the pollutant had been dumped into the Cape Fear River, a drinking water supply for Wilmington and other communities, leading to the court-enforced consent agreement two years later.
Since then, the company has made significant investments to control pollution, having installed a barrier wall to prevent PFAS flows into the river. Still, the state announced in March that another 150,000 residences were now eligible for private well testing for PFAS as the pollution continues to spread.
Carla White learned two years ago that the water at her home in rural Brunswick County was contaminated with high levels of the pollutants. The news shocked White, who lives over 80 miles southeast of the Fayetteville plant.
Now, she wonders if her 18-year-old daughter's lifelong health issues could be connected to the pollution.
'I've lived in this county and all my life, and there's a good possibility that every well I've drank from has been contaminated,' said White, 45, who got a filtration system installed this year.
The Department of Environmental Quality has deemed Chemours' application incomplete and is requesting more details on specific PFAS present at the plant.
A solution to cooling?
Chemours' West Virginia plant opened a second fluoropolymer production line last year in response to growing demand from the semiconductor industry.
Now, in a pollution permit application pending before the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, the company describes plans for a third production line.
A 300 millimeter wafer with semiconductor chips and finished microchips is pictured. | Jens Schlueter/AFP via Getty Images
The expansion doesn't sit well with some former EPA officials. Compared to the North Carolina factory, the one in West Virginia has fewer controls in place to limit PFAS releases.
'There remains ongoing concerns about what the overall discharges are from the [West Virginia] facility, including, in particular, stormwater discharges,' said Schafer, the former EPA official.
In response to a 2023 agreement with EPA, Chemours has proposed a plan for preventing some PFAS releases at the Parkersburg plant. Nonetheless, the plant has repeatedly exceeded the pollution limits in its original wastewater permit and in its new permit associated with the second fluoropolymer production line.
Both the data center industry and semiconductor manufacturers are aware of PFAS concerns amid growing scrutiny over the environmental impacts of AI.
Researchers at Microsoft released a paper in Nature last month evaluating the sustainability of different cooling technologies for data centers. The facilities — which are full of semiconductors — must be kept cool around the clock, posing major concerns about energy use and contributions to global warming.
Chemours plans to soon offer what it describes as a less energy-intensive solution to data center cooling. Specifically, the company is expanding products for two-phase immersion cooling, which uses PFAS.
Two-phase immersion cooling isn't widely used in data centers, but it has the potential to save companies money on maintenance costs, said Chien of the University of Chicago. Still, he described it as 'a choice' for data center operators that merits scrutiny.
'It's not clear we need to use the [cooling technologies] that involve the use of PFAS,' Chien said. 'Even for two-phase immersion, there's a lot of active research on different coolants that could be used and don't involve PFAS chemicals.'
The Semiconductor PFAS Consortium, meanwhile, maintains that the industry's use of PFAS is likely a small fraction of global demand. Still, the group recently released a report confirming that some semiconductor manufacturing plants release PFAS via wastewater.
For Biser, the former North Carolina regulator, the reason for Chemours' expansion plans should not change the fact that companies need to manage the substances safely. Regulators must also scrutinize the necessity of all PFAS uses and search for alternatives as much as possible, she said.
'The bottom line for me is not saying you can't use it. It's saying that you've got to make sure it's not getting to places it shouldn't be,' she said.
White, the Brunswick County resident, said she's trying to get answers from doctors about whether her daughter's health conditions could be tied to pollution detected in her well.
Her water sampling results, shared with E&E News, showed extremely high levels of PFMOAA, a PFAS tied to the Fayetteville plant. While the substance is not currently regulated in drinking water, EPA researchers recently found that rats exposed to PFMOAA showed signs of reduced birth weight, hypoglycemia and 'numerous significantly altered genes in the liver associated with fatty acid and glucose metabolism.'
White's daughter was diagnosed last month with a rare genetic disorder. She was born early, experienced premature puberty and has neurological issues that will prevent her from living independently, she said.
'I'm trying to get a health study done in this area, with the amount of neurological issues in not so much my generation, but in our offspring.' White said.

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