As artificial intelligence companies race to build ever-larger data centers across North Carolina, a new chemical coolant awaiting federal approval is emerging as a flashpoint between two competing environmental worries: draining local water supplies or reintroducing persistent PFAS chemicals into communities already scarred by contamination. Chemours has spent years developing Opteon 2P50, a fluorinated fluid designed for two-phase immersion cooling systems that submerge computer equipment in nonconductive liquid, boiling and condensing it for reuse to chill increasingly powerful computer chips.
The chemical is not yet commercially available in the United States and remains under review by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to reporting by WRAL, whose climate change reporter Liz McLaughlin detailed the dispute. Chemours has publicly promoted Opteon 2P50 since at least 2023 and says it has provided the EPA with extensive technical and scientific information about the fluid, though the station reported that after more than a week of correspondence, the company did not provide WRAL's requested data and studies on emissions, atmospheric breakdown, or the underlying figures behind its energy and water savings claims.
PFAS are a broad class of manufactured fluorinated compounds known for their persistence in the environment, and some have been linked to cancer, decreased fertility, immune-system effects, and other health problems, per the same WRAL account. That history carries particular weight in North Carolina, where Chemours and DuPont released PFAS from the Fayetteville Works facility into the Cape Fear River and the air, contaminating drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. Chemours has been required under a 2019 consent order to sharply reduce air emissions, address contaminated groundwater, install a thermal oxidizer among its pollution controls, and provide safe drinking water to affected residents; the company says it has invested more than $400 million to reduce PFAS emissions at Fayetteville Works and about $160 million in private well testing, and has no plans to change its manufacturing activities there. Chemours also says it does not manufacture Opteon 2P50, its precursors, or intermediates at that plant.
Why Regulators Are Under Pressure to Act
The chemical's arrival comes as North Carolina lawmakers weigh how to rein in the water demands of data center expansion. Large evaporatively cooled data centers can consume between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water per day at peak operation, and research cited by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute puts total U.S. data center direct water usage past 17 billion gallons annually as of 2023. In June 2026, the North Carolina House passed Senate Bill 730, the Ratepayer Protection Act, by a 69-44 vote, which would require certain large facilities to use closed-loop cooling designed to minimize water consumption. The bill stalled after returning to the Senate Rules Committee, according to Carolina Journal, even as lawmakers continued considering additional environmental guardrails for data centers this year.
Chemours frames Opteon 2P50 as a solution to exactly that water problem. The company says the fluid could nearly eliminate water use, reduce cooling energy use by more than 90%, and that customer trials have demonstrated its performance. Chemours describes the design as a sealed, closed-loop system intended to capture and reuse fluid, which it says can be reclaimed, reprocessed, and reused rather than discharged, and it argues that individual PFAS chemicals have different properties and risks that should be evaluated based on each compound's specific characteristics and exposure potential rather than as a class.
Environmental Groups Push Back on EPA Review
Not everyone is convinced a closed loop stays closed. A coalition of 17 environmental organizations led by Earthjustice, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, submitted formal public comments urging the EPA to deny the Toxic Substances Control Act premanufacture notice for Opteon 2P50, chemically identified as 3-Hexene, 1,1,1,2,2,5,5,6,6,6-decafluoro-, according to Verdant Law. Drew Ball, southeast campaigns director for NRDC, said there is no real closed-loop system for PFAS and called for better standards and research on pollution from data center cooling systems, telling WRAL that development is moving faster than regulators' understanding of potential pollution.
Those concerns are not purely theoretical. Chemours has disclosed an estimated annual evaporative loss rate of approximately 0.7% for Opteon 2P50, though the company did not confirm that figure when asked directly, per WRAL's reporting. An analysis published by CHIPS Communities United found that a standard two-phase immersion tank holding 1,270 liters of fluid can expand into more than 300,000 liters of fluorinated gas if released into the atmosphere, and that the chemical carries a global warming potential of 10. Environmental organizations remain concerned about releases during PFAS manufacture, use, maintenance, and disposal broadly, not just catastrophic leaks.
Breakdown Products Draw International Scrutiny
Part of the dispute centers on what happens after the fluid escapes into the air. Verdant Law's July 2026 regulatory analysis noted that atmospheric degradation of hydrofluoroolefin coolants like Opteon 2P50 yields persistent short-chain compounds including trifluoroacetic acid, which the European Chemicals Agency's Risk Assessment Committee agreed in June 2026 to propose classifying as a Category 2 reproductive toxin. Unlike legacy PFAS, HFOs break down relatively quickly in air, but advocates warn the resulting compounds are mobile and can accumulate in surface waters.
Laura McKelvey, a Chapel Hill resident and former EPA employee who worked at the agency for 34 years, worries about discharge, leaks, and maintenance issues tied to data center cooling systems. Her concerns echo a broader question North Carolina residents are asking as data centers multiply across the state: what these facilities could mean for local water supplies, both in terms of consumption and contamination risk.
Why Chemours Is Filling a Market Void
The push behind Opteon 2P50 traces back to a 2022 announcement. According to The Cooling Report, 3M said it would cease all PFAS chemical manufacturing by the end of 2025, eliminating the primary supply of Novec and Fluorinert fluids that had long been used for two-phase immersion cooling. That exit followed steep legal costs: 3M received final court approval in March 2024 for a $12.5 billion settlement with more than 11,000 public water systems over municipal PFAS drinking water contamination claims, paid out over 13 years. Chemours has since stepped into the resulting supply gap with Opteon 2P50.
North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality reviews data center permit applications under existing state and federal environmental laws, determining requirements based on each project's specific design, and regulators and communities may lack a full picture of environmental trade-offs before these cooling systems operate at scale. Public frustration over how far those rules go surfaced earlier this year when residents and environmental groups criticized draft Environmental Management Commission rules that would require industrial facilities to monitor wastewater for PFOA, PFOS, and GenX without setting numeric discharge limits or mandatory penalties, as detailed in Hoodline's coverage of that Raleigh hearing.
How Tech Companies Are Cooling Their North Carolina Projects
Not every company operating in the state is turning to fluorinated fluids. Microsoft, which is developing data centers in Person and Catawba counties, said it does not add PFAS chemicals to its data center cooling operations. Some Microsoft facilities use propylene glycol in closed-loop systems, and the company plans air-cooled chillers with a closed recirculating water loop for its Person County project, saying that water is not treated with chemicals or additives. Its cooling systems include leak detection, automatic shutdown systems, and spill-response procedures.
Amazon has taken a different path for its planned Richmond County facilities, opting against liquid immersion cooling. The company expects to use outside air to cool servers about 93% of the year, relying on evaporative cooling only on the hottest days, and says total chlorine will be the only treatment chemical remaining in its discharge after treating evaporative cooling water with sodium hypochlorite and pH-balancing chemicals. Amazon has said its cooling water will meet applicable discharge requirements.
Federal drinking water rules add another layer of uncertainty to the broader PFAS picture. The EPA proposed in May 2026 to extend municipal compliance deadlines for PFOA and PFOS drinking water limits from 2029 to 2031, while simultaneously proposing to rescind separate Safe Drinking Water Act standards for GenX and three other PFAS compounds. That comes as North Carolina communities continue investing in local defenses against contamination, including Concord's newly completed $18 million filtration system built to strip forever chemicals from tap water. Ultimately, some data center cooling technologies rely on PFAS while others avoid it entirely, and as newer cooling technologies promise reduced water and electricity use, North Carolina regulators, lawmakers, and residents are left weighing whether the trade-off is worth it before the systems are running at full scale.
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