On July 10, we honor our crews who are committed to powering our communities safely for National Lineworker Appreciation Day.

Entergy joins the Edison Electric Institute, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and other industry groups in observing the holiday in order to recognize the efforts and sacrifices made year-round by lineworkers across the country.

From restoring power during hurricanes to maintaining thousands of miles of distribution and transmission lines, lineworkers are among the most visible and essential members of our utility’s workforce. Working high above the ground and often in challenging environments, lineworkers face hazards that require extensive training, constant awareness and a deep commitment to safety.

Our lineworkers are the first to respond and deliver for our communities when the lights go out. Despite facing challenging conditions in the Gulf South region, they endure and overcome when called upon. Whether facing brutally freezing temperatures during ice storms, wading through varying depths of mud and water in bayous or responding during the peak heat of Southern summers, our crews constantly work together to safely display their immense expertise, focus and perseverance.

“By nature, to serve as a lineworker requires an intense dedication to one’s community, and I’m thankful for the crews that have chosen to serve our customers every day,” said Charles Long, senior vice president of power delivery. “Their courage, skill and dedication in all kinds of weather and conditions make it possible for us to serve our customers safely and reliably every day.”

To learn more about how our lineworkers construct, operate and maintain our equipment to serve 3 million customers, visit entergy.com/lineworkers. Participate in honoring lineworkers and their families on social media by posting your message using the hashtag #thankalineworker.

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• Partnerships with America250’s “America Gives” initiative, Points of Light, and 9/11 Day to Mobilize Employees and Ignite Community Involvement Nationwide
• Comcast NBCUniversal employees are mobilized year-round to volunteer with community-based organizations across the country. In 2025, more than 18,000 employees contributed 165,000+ volunteer hours in support of 2,000 organizations in the United States.

As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, Comcast NBCUniversal is celebrating this historic milestone with a renewed commitment to service. Through an investment of more than $3 million in cash and in-kind support, we’re partnering with America250’s America Gives initiative, Points of Light, and 9/11 Day to help make this moment a defining year of action, connection, and meaningful impact for employees and communities nationwide.

Together, these partnerships underscore our shared belief in the unifying power of service and the role it plays in inspiring collective action to strengthen communities. As the nation reflects on its history and looks ahead to the future, Comcast NBCUniversal is helping turn that reflection into momentum—encouraging employees to show up for their neighbors and carry forward a spirit of service that lasts well beyond this anniversary year.

“Comcast NBCUniversal has a long-standing commitment to the communities we serve. This milestone creates an opportunity to expand how our employees give back, support causes they care about, and make a meaningful difference in communities this year and into the future.”
Dalila Wilson-Scott
Executive Vice President and Chief Impact & Inclusion Officer of Comcast Corporation and President of the Comcast NBCUniversal Foundation

“As the nation celebrated America’s 250th anniversary and prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we’re reminded of the unique power of service to bring people together. Through our partnership with America Gives, Points of Light, and 9/11 Day, we are pleased to work with organizations that play an important role in mobilizing service efforts and engaging our employees in the communities where we live and work.”
Hilary Smith
Executive Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at NBCUniversal

The Partnerships:

• America Gives — Comcast NBCUniversal is sponsoring America250’s America Gives and joining Giving 4th to spotlight its ongoing commitment to volunteerism and charitable giving. During the week of July 4^th, the company has offered a 2:1 match to benefit the organizations employees support nationwide.
• Points of Light — Comcast NBCUniversal is investing in Points of Light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, to help shape the future of volunteerism on a national scale. Chairing Points of Light’s Corporate Service Council, Comcast leadership is collaborating with companies across the network to help guide the future of corporate civic engagement, strengthening how companies connect, act, and drive impact in the communities they serve.
• 9/11 Day — Established in 2002, 9/11 Day honors the spirit of unity that emerged following the September 11 attacks and has grown into the nation’s largest annual day of service, bringing together volunteers in 50 cities this year to provide 20 million meals to neighbors in need. This September, the 25th anniversary will serve as an opportunity for Comcast NBCUniversal to mobilize hundreds of employees to assemble and distribute shelf-stable meals, supporting communities facing hunger.

Smart buildings are no longer just about connected devices, sensors, and automation. The bigger opportunity is using workplace data to make buildings more efficient, more responsive, and better aligned to the people and businesses that depend on them.

The need is clear. Buildings accounted for about 28% of global energy consumption and 37% of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2024, according to a 2026 report from the UN Environment Programme. For businesses, workplace environments offer a practical place to reduce energy use, manage operating costs, and improve the experience of employees and visitors.

Achieving that requires more than isolated building upgrades. It requires connecting systems that have often operated in silos, understanding how spaces are actually used, and turning building data into better decisions about energy, real estate, and employee experience.

Turning building data into better decisions

Many building systems already generate useful data. Badge, HVAC, lighting, collaboration, and facilities systems may all capture useful information, but that data often lives in separate places, creating a fragmented view. A future-proof workplace starts by connecting those signals. Cisco technologies such as Cisco Spaces, Webex devices, Meraki cameras, and Power over Ethernet lighting and shading can help bring data together across workplace and building management platforms, creating a more complete and more accurate picture of how people are using a space.

That visibility matters because building usage is rarely uniform. Some areas may be heavily used while others sit empty for much of the day. Conference rooms may be booked but not occupied. Certain floors may need heating, cooling, or lighting at different levels based on real-time activity.

In other words, smart building data can help facilities and real estate teams make decisions based on how workplaces are actually used, not how they were planned on paper.

Smart building data in action

Cisco works with customers to connect networking, collaboration, and building systems, helping real estate and facilities teams use workplace data to improve efficiency, sustainability, and employee experience.

For example, Cisco worked with the U.S. General Services Administration on a Workplace Innovation Lab in Washington, D.C., testing a more modern workplace approach within a federal building environment. By renovating a portion of the space and comparing it to an unrenovated area, the project showed how workplace design and connected technology can support measurable efficiency gains. The organization reported that over one year, the renovated space was 73% more energy efficient than the unrenovated space and avoided five metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

Better workplaces, better outcomes

Smart building data can help organizations connect efficiency goals with a better workplace experience.

Energy use is one of the clearest opportunities. HVAC and lighting are typically among the largest sources of energy consumption in an office environment. With better visibility into occupancy and usage patterns, organizations can make more targeted decisions about when and where to use energy — instead of heating, cooling, or lighting spaces based only on fixed schedules or assumptions.

Those same insights can also support a better experience for employees and visitors. Data about room availability, occupancy, air quality, temperature, and noise levels can help people find spaces that fit the work they need to do, whether they are looking for a quiet area, a collaboration space, or a room with the right environmental conditions.

Cisco’s London office offers one example of how workplace technology can support a more inclusive environment. The space was designed with neuro-inclusivity in mind, including spatial organization, quieter and louder zones, wayfinding, lighting, furniture, air quality, and thermal comfort. Technology helps make those features more visible and usable, giving employees more ability to choose the environment that works best for them.

From measurement to action

Smart building technology can also support third-party certifications, including green building and wellness-focused standards, by helping teams capture and visualize data related to indoor air quality, temperature, humidity, and other building conditions. This also gives teams a clearer view of how buildings are performing, so they can identify opportunities to improve over time.

As more building data becomes connected, AI can add another layer. It can help teams identify patterns, surface issues, and recommend actions faster than manual analysis alone. For facilities and real estate teams, that could mean diagnosing why a conference room is too warm, understanding why a space is underused, or finding new ways to optimize energy use.

Smart buildings are not about technology for technology’s sake. They are about using data to future-proof workplaces; ultimately making them more efficient, more sustainable, and more responsive to the people who use them.

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Earlier in the year, both sites achieved recertification under the WHC Conservation Certification®. Powered by Tandem Global, the WHC Conservation Certification® is the only voluntary sustainability standard designed specifically for biodiversity enhancement and conservation education on corporate lands. Certification is awarded through an independent, third-party evaluation of on-site programs.

In addition to the Chemours’ sites being recognized for continued progress in maintaining and advancing certified conservation programs, Chemours’ Fayetteville Works was nominated for both the Avian Corporate Conservation Award and the Pollinator Corporate Conservation Award, highlighting the site’s strong focus on protecting wildlife habitats and supporting ecological balance.

Advancing Nature Through Everyday Operations

Across both sites, conservation efforts are embedded into how work gets done—from restoring habitats and supporting native species to engaging employees and local communities in environmental education. These programs reflect a broader commitment to responsible environmental management and to advancing Chemours’ Corporate Responsibility Commitment (CRC) goals.

By participating in globally recognized programs like WHC Conservation Certification®, Chemours sites are contributing to a growing network of corporate lands dedicated to biodiversity and conservation education—demonstrating how industry can play a meaningful role in supporting ecosystems while delivering business value.

The annual EPEAT Purchaser Awards celebrate visionary institutions that actively prioritize EPEAT registered products. In doing so, these organizations do more than meet internal sustainability milestones; they fundamentally shift the market toward responsible electronic supply chains. Highlighting the intersection of institutional mission and environmental stewardship, this year’s cohort features the University of California, Santa Barbara, showcasing how educational institutions are uniquely positioned to champion social and environmental responsibility.

Showcasing the immense power of university procurement to drive systemic environmental change, the University of California, Santa Barbara stands out as a premier honoree this year.

“As institutions of higher education, we have a responsibility not only to teach sustainability but also to practice it. Institutional procurement can account for a significant share of supply chain emissions, making sustainable purchasing one of our strongest tools for reducing environmental impact” explained Jen Bowser, Sustainable Procurement Program Manager. “Receiving the 2026 EPEAT Purchaser Award recognizes the collective efforts of staff, faculty, and students across UC Santa Barbara to make sustainability part of everyday decision-making and reflects our commitment to purchasing electronics that support both our campus community and the future of our planet.”

The awards also spotlighted global leadership in the public sector, honoring the Scottish Government for an incredible eighth consecutive year. Their enduring commitment underscores how national procurement frameworks can actively build a sustainable future.

“These frameworks continue to support Scotland’s Net Zero ambitions through the circular economy and environmental best practice,” said Calum Elliot, Deputy Director, National Collaborative Procurement Division. “We can only achieve this with the support of our wider public sector colleagues, and our gratitude goes to them, our suppliers, and the Global Electronics Council for helping us move towards our sustainability goals.”

By collectively purchasing more than 1.5 million EPEAT registered products, the 2026 award winners did not just protect the planet—they also demonstrated that responsible procurement is smart business, securing an estimated $43 million in operational savings over the lifecycles of the products. Beyond massive greenhouse gas reductions, this year’s winners achieved remarkable conservation milestones across the board, collectively reducing:

• 978 gigawatt-hours of energy, enough to power 80,500 average US households for a year.
• 20,400 metric tons of solid waste, matching the annual waste output of 11,000 US households.
• 2.25 billion liters of water, saving enough water to fill 903 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

“This year’s winners demonstrate that when leadership and sustainability converge, the environmental dividends are immense,” remarked Bob Mitchell, CEO of the Global Electronics Council. “EPEAT is proud to empower these trailblazers with the tools they need to confidently advance their impact goals, protect vital resources, and lead the global marketplace toward a more responsible future.”

By choosing EPEAT registered products, the 2026 award winners are doing more than reducing their own footprint—they are establishing a bold blueprint for institutions worldwide. The Global Electronics Council applauds these pioneers and invites organizations everywhere to join this vital movement, leverage their purchasing power, and help accelerate the transition to a sustainable, circular economy.

To learn more about the EPEAT Purchaser Awards and view the full list of 2026 recipients, visit: globalelectronicscouncil.org/epeat-purchaser-awards.

Global Electronics Council

The Global Electronics Council (GEC) envisions a world with only sustainable electronic technology that enhances the well-being of people and planet. Our mission is to accelerate the transformation of markets toward prioritizing the most sustainable electronic products and services.

As stewards of the EPEAT ecolabel, we set global standards for electronics that empower brands, their value chains and their buyers to achieve ambitious sustainability goals. Through our thought leadership, advocacy, and EPEAT ecolabel, GEC is helping to reshape the electronics industry into a driving force for environmental preservation and global well-being.

Our EPEAT Ecolabel

We are stewards of the EPEAT ecolabel – the definitive global standard to drive change across the technology sector from extraction to end of life. EPEAT enables manufacturers to follow strict third party verified standards while providing transparency for buyers.

Since its launch in 2006, procurement professionals have reported purchases of over 3.2 billion EPEAT products, generating cost savings exceeding 39 billion USD and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by over 370 million metric tonnes.

Media Contact

Erik Fessler

Senior Manager, Global Communications

Global Electronics Council

Direct Line: +1 (971) 380-4088

U.S. Eastern Time Zone

efessler@gec.org

The Challenge: Silent Infrastructure

Safety hardware such as guardrails, crash cushions, and cable barriers is critical for protecting drivers in crashes. However, maintaining these assets across thousands of miles is a massive operational challenge. Historically, there has been no formal reporting mechanism for the status of these assets; DOTs often wouldn’t know a barrier was damaged until a manual inspection or a third-party report. This lack of visibility can lead to dangerous situations in which a previously damaged crash cushion fails to provide adequate protection during a subsequent incident.

The Solution: Pi-lit® Impact Detection System (IDS)

To bridge this information gap, The Ray partnered with the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) to deploy the Pi-lit® Impact Detection System (IDS).

How it Works: The IDS consists of smart, cellular-connected sensors that mount directly onto critical signage, guardrails, and cable barriers.

Real-Time Alerts: Within 60 seconds of a vehicle impact, the system sends automated SMS and email alerts to maintenance crews.

Precision Data: These alerts provide the exact location and time of unreported hits, ensuring critical hardware is repaired immediately.

Smart Features: The sensors even record their initial orientation; if a sign falls over due to an impact, the system alerts the team that the sign is no longer providing vital information to motorists.

Impact on The Ray Highway and Beyond

Following a successful one-year pilot, GDOT is expanding the Pi-lit® system across Metro Atlanta, North Georgia, and the Georgia Coast. This expansion helps GDOT investigate how smart guardrails can enhance safety on winding roads, congested corridors, and coastal highways.

Beyond immediate safety, the partnership provides several operational benefits:

Reduced Response Times: Maintenance and emergency response teams can be mobilized faster, often integrated with CCTV cameras to enhance situational awareness.

Revenue Recovery: By documenting the exact time of impact, agencies can better identify responsible parties and recover costs for damaged infrastructure—up to $15,000 per event.

Post-Storm Assessment: The sensors are even being used to help GDOT assess roadway debris after severe storms by detecting impacts on or near the pavement.

A Vision for Connected Safety

The Ray’s partnership with Pi-lit® is built on a shared vision to accelerate road safety improvements. By enabling infrastructure to see beyond its physical presence and communicate directly with agencies and, eventually, connected vehicles, they are creating a future in which every journey is protected by a layer of connected intelligence.

Together, The Ray and Pi-lit® are ensuring that highways are no longer just passive paths, but active participants in safeguarding every driver on the road.

DALLAS, July 7, 2026 /3BL/ – Mary Kay Inc., a global leader in beauty and women’s empowerment is proud to spotlight its commitment to social impact around the world through the Pink Changing Lives^®campaign and the launch of the Special Edition^† Mary Kay^® Blush Stick – a product designed to inspire confidence while making a meaningful difference.

Available in the shades “Kind Spirit” and “Spark Change,” these pocket-sized blush sticks are more than a beauty essential, they are a symbol of beauty with a purpose. Through the Pink Changing Lives^® campaign, each blush stick purchase in participating Mary Kay markets contributes directly to local nonprofit partners, helping fund critical causes that impact women every day around the world.

Did You Know: 

Since 2008, Mary Kay’s multi-faceted Pink Changing Lives^® global program has contributed more than $230 million in monetary and in-kind support to enrich the lives of women and their families. These efforts include advancing cancer research, supporting survivors of domestic violence, and creating opportunities for economic empowerment worldwide. Since its inception, Mary Kay’s Pink Changing Lives cause marketing campaign has been a cornerstone of the company’s social impact program, which has positively contributed to local communities through a total of 18 Limited-Edition products.

“At Mary Kay beauty is bold, confident, and impactful,” said Dr. Lucy Gildea, Chief Brand and Scientific Officer at Mary Kay. “The Pink Changing Lives^® program reflects our heart as a company and our unwavering belief in supporting and uplifting women everywhere. This year’s Special-Edition^† Mary Kay® Blush Stick has a powerful purpose, helping create real change for women and families worldwide with every swipe of the cheek.”

This deep-rooted commitment to social impact has earned Mary Kay worldwide recognition. In 2026, the company ranked among the Top 10 on Forbes’ Best Brands for Social Impact list for the second year in a row, standing at #8 as the only beauty and direct selling brand to achieve this distinction out of 5,500 brands.¹

Inclusive Beauty Innovation That Supports Every Woman

• The 2026 special-edition blush sticks meaningfully complement the recent launch of TimeWise^® 3D Foundation, designed to deliver inclusive, high-performance results for women of all skin tones.
• The newly reformulated TimeWise^® 3D Foundation features 36 skin tone-true shades across both matte and luminous finishes.
• The TimeWise^® 3D Foundation was developed using proprietary IntelliMatch Technology, informed by more than 3,000 real skin tone data points. The result is a seamless, natural-looking match that simplifies shade selection.
• Consumers can also take advantage of Mary Kay’s AI-powered Foundation Finder, an award-winning tool that helps identify their ideal shade with confidence.

A Legacy of Enriching Women’s Lives

For more than 60 years, Mary Kay has championed opportunities for women through entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and innovation. Founded in 1963 by Mary Kay Ash, the company was built on a vision of empowering women to define their own success.

Today, that mission continues to guide every product and every initiative – from innovative beauty science to programs like Pink Changing Lives^® – which bring tangible support to women and families across the globe.

***

About Mary Kay

One of the original glass ceiling breakers, Mary Kay Ash founded her dream beauty brand in Texas in 1963 with one goal: to enrich women’s lives. That dream has blossomed into a global company with millions of independent sales force members in 40 markets. For over 60 years, the Mary Kay opportunity has empowered women to define their own futures through education, mentorship, advocacy, and innovation. Mary Kay is dedicated to investing in the science behind beauty and manufacturing cutting-edge skincare, color cosmetics, nutritional supplements, and fragrances. Mary Kay believes in preserving our planet for future generations, protecting women impacted by cancer and domestic abuse, and encouraging youth to follow their dreams. Learn more at marykayglobal.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, or follow us on X.

# # #

¹Alan Schwarz, Forbes Staff. (March 17, 2026). “2026 Best Brands for Social Impact.”

^†Available while supplies last.

Mary Kay Inc. Corporate Communications
newsroom.marykay.com
972.687.5332 or media@mkcorp.com

For more than 160 years, PNC’s strategy has been focused on the communities and people we serve. PNC’s investment in and collaboration with our employees, communities, customers, and shareholders directly reflect the strength and character of our company. When our communities thrive, we thrive.

As I step into the Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer role, I’m honored to share the substantive progress our teams accomplished in 2025. It’s important to emphasize that we do not- and cannot- do this work alone. In 2025, we engaged shareholders and community partners on corporate strategy, performance, and our role as a corporate citizen. These conversations provided valuable insight, reinforced accountability and supported continuous improvement.

Explore PNC’s Corporate Responsibility Report

Sustained and consistent community impact

At PNC, community investment is fundamental to our business. In 2025, we completed and exceeded two transformative multiyear commitments:

The four-year Community Benefits Plan surpassed our $88 billion pledge, deploying $119.3 billion in capital to promote homeownership, support small businesses and advance community investment through loans, financing, investments and philanthropic contributions. In 2025, Community Development Banking extended $660 million in loans and investments, up from $469 million in 2024.

Additionally, we exceeded our $30 billion Environmental Finance pledge, mobilized $33.4 billion since 2021 across renewable energy, green buildings, clean transportation, and environmentally linked loan products. We also achieved 100% renewable energy for purchased electricity by the end of 2025.

More accessible financial tools and solutions

We continue to innovate for customers. In 2025, we launched an enhanced online banking platform serving 11.5 million customers. Our mobile branches traveled nearly 94,000 miles, serving almost 20,000 customers in 3,449 visits coordinated by 255 community organizations. We complemented this outreach with 461 free financial education seminars designed to help participants make informed financial decisions.

We also expanded our branch network in 2025, including 26 new branches and 170 renovations that modernize the in‑branch experience while supporting local communities. This growth continues through PNC’s $2 billion investment commitment to add more than 300 new branches and 1,400 renovations over the next five years. On January 5, 2026, PNC acquired FirstBank Holding Company, expanding our presence in Colorado and Arizona.

Early childhood education to drive economic opportunity

PNC has invested in early childhood education for more than 20 years because we know education is a powerful driver of economic opportunity.

Through PNC Grow Up Great®, our signature $500 million, bilingual early childhood education initiative, we remain steadfast in our philanthropic commitment to help prepare children from birth to age 5 for success in school and life. Since 2004, PNC Grow Up Great has supported more than 11.5 million children through over $290 million in grants and programming. PNC employees have volunteered more than 1.3 million hours since inception, including 84,549 hours across 2,000 partner organizations in 2025.

Taking action to help close the housing affordability gap

Like education, home ownership is a powerful driver of economic opportunity and generational wealth. At a time when our country faces a clear shortage of affordable housing, we’re focused on expanding access.

In 2025, more than 40 percent of our mortgages in primary assessment area markets supported low- and moderate‑income (LMI) borrowers. In addition to homeownership, PNC also supports the development of affordable rental housing. In 2025, PNC Multifamily Capital, one of the nation’s largest syndicators of affordable rental housing, provided $4.0 billion in debt and equity to create or preserve 15,900 units of affordable rental housing across 127 properties in 31 states and Washington, D.C.

Through this work, and our insights from the Community Benefits Plan, we will continue to make meaningful investments and improvements in our communities to support housing affordability and strengthen the trust that our stakeholders place in PNC.

Talent & inclusion drive growth

Serving diverse communities requires talented employees with relevant skills, experiences and perspectives. To do so effectively, and win in the marketplace, we must recruit and retain talented employees. To support this imperative, we do not discriminate against any employee, potential or current client, supplier, or any other stakeholder, consistent with applicable laws.

Our people are at the heart of everything we do. Our 55,000-plus employees strive to elevate our business, and we are intentional in supporting their well-being. In 2025, we introduced Brilliant Thrives Here® Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to help employees and expanded learning opportunities. More than 10,500 employees have enrolled in academic programs and employees have completed 4.2 million hours of training through PNC University (PNCU). Teams also adopted generative AI platforms introduced in 2025, including Microsoft CoPilot®, to enhance productivity and support informed decision-making.

Looking forward

By advancing early education, housing access and community investment, we strengthen the communities where we live and work. Our approach to growth centers on serving communities well, earning long-term trust, and responsible expansion, including the ethical use of AI. In 2025, PNC strengthened governance for the responsible use of AI through the establishment of a Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) framework and policy and continued oversight from the Responsible AI Working Group.

These efforts in 2025 represent just a snapshot of the comprehensive accomplishments detailed throughout the report, demonstrating our long-standing commitment to customers and stakeholders. It’s how we’ve prospered for more than 160 years — and it’s what we’ll continue to do in communities across the country. 

Explore the full Corporate Responsibility Report

Media Contact: Corporate Responsibility Communications

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He takes listeners on a journey from his formative years in Zimbabwe to using the architectural wisdom of ants and termites to solve real-world flooding crises.

Tune in to Episode 6 to explore how one can take a childhood curiosity of observing insects and turn it into a global engineering framework, bringing together Indigenous knowledge, biomimicry, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.

Listen to the podcast

As AI adoption accelerates, we are beginning to confront questions that extend beyond computing power alone. How will we generate the energy needed to support AI at scale? How will we manage increasingly concentrated heat loads? How will we use water responsibly? How will communities experience the infrastructure being built around them?

These are not secondary considerations. They are becoming core design questions.

A Moment of Choice

We have seen challenges like this before.

Over the past several decades, industries around the world have worked together to transform refrigeration systems—improving performance while significantly reducing environmental impact. That progress did not happen because of a single breakthrough. It required collaboration across manufacturers, policymakers, equipment providers, and technology developers. It required the willingness to adopt new technologies and rethink established systems.

I believe AI infrastructure is approaching a similar moment.

As chip architectures become more powerful and workloads more demanding, energy density continues to increase. That translates directly into higher heat loads, greater cooling requirements, and increasing pressure on energy and water systems.

We have reached a choice point. We can continue to incrementally adapt legacy systems, or we can rethink how the infrastructure supporting AI is designed.

Cooling is one clear example. Air cooling has served the industry well, but for the performance levels AI now requires, air alone is reaching its limits in data centers. Many operators are moving toward liquid cooling, including single-phase direct-to-chip approaches. But as rack densities continue to rise, we will need to keep moving toward more advanced solutions, including two-phase liquid cooling.

In many cases, the barrier is no longer technical feasibility. It is risk tolerance and inertia in existing infrastructure designs. Delaying adoption may feel lower risk in the short term, but it can also increase cost and complexity over time as infrastructure struggles to keep up.

That transition matters because the decision to adopt new cooling technologies can do more than support performance. It can help reduce total cost of ownership, lower energy requirements, and dramatically reduce water use.

Those outcomes matter beyond the walls of a data center. AI’s impact is experienced through electricity demand, water use, siting decisions, and the relationship between infrastructure and the communities that host it.

As AI infrastructure grows, there is also a growing expectation that the entire value chain—from technology to materials—operates responsibly. Trust will depend on performance, transparency, and responsibility advancing together.

Efficiency May Be the Most Underrated Innovation Opportunity

I suspect one of the largest opportunities over the next decade may lie in efficiency.

The opportunity is significant. Better workload allocation, smarter cooling, eliminating wasted compute, and making the most out of every electron of energy can drive meaningful efficiency gains. The challenge, however, is not technology. In many cases, the challenge is adoption.

We need to think beyond incremental improvements. The biggest gains often come when industries are willing to leapfrog to new approaches rather than continuously optimizing legacy systems.

In cooling, for example, advanced two-phase liquid cooling technologies offer opportunities to reduce energy consumption, nearly eliminate water use, reduce noise, and support significantly higher compute densities than were previously possible.

The question is not whether these technologies will play a larger role in the future, but how quickly we can scale when we know rack densities will start to exceed 500kW within 2027.

Performance and speed are often prioritized over efficiency, even when more efficient solutions exist. That is why this ultimately becomes a leadership and systems question. Do we design for performance and efficiency, so they are inseparable, or do we continue to treat them as competing priorities?

Why Policy Matters

This is also why policy discussions are increasingly important.

We know it is difficult to manage what we do not measure, and today we are not measuring the full system. Energy use is only part of the picture. Water use, land use, and community impact must also be considered if we want infrastructure that is both high-performing and resource-efficient.

The next step is better disclosure and a broader set of metrics that reflect real-world resource use and community impact. Policy can play an important role by setting clear expectations, so efficiency and transparency are built in from the start. That helps us move from a partial picture to a more complete one.

Smart policy can help establish clear expectations around efficiency, resource use, transparency, and community benefit in ways that encourage innovation while delivering better outcomes. We are already starting to see this happen. In Singapore, policymakers reopened data center development with stricter efficiency requirements, while Europe is expanding reporting requirements beyond energy consumption alone to include broader resource-use metrics.

In the United States, similar momentum is emerging through bipartisan liquid cooling legislation introduced in both the House and Senate, signaling growing recognition of the need for more efficient, next generation data center infrastructure.

In major technology transitions, progress depends on more than technical readiness. It also depends on the ability of policy, industry, and equipment manufacturers to move together. That was true in the evolution of refrigerants, and I believe it will be true as AI infrastructure evolves.

Building What Comes Next

We have seen industries navigate transitions like this before. The organizations and countries that lead are rarely the ones that wait for perfect conditions. They are the ones willing to embrace innovation, align incentives, and build for what comes next.

The decisions we make today will help determine whether AI develops on infrastructure that is merely larger—or infrastructure that is smarter, more efficient, more resilient, and better aligned with the communities it serves.

This is an opportunity worth getting right. And it will take leadership to get there.

Denise Dignam is the President and Chief Executive Office of The Chemours Company, a global chemistry company with a vision to deliver Trusted Chemistry that makes people’s lives better and helps communities thrive.