Sponsors (12)
The bill directs rapid DOE analysis and guidance to promote liquid cooling and heat‑reuse for data centers—potentially cutting energy use, grid strain, and operating costs—while creating near‑term capital and administrative costs, operational complexity, equity concerns for smaller firms, and risks around increased electricity demand and security vulnerabilities.
Communities, utilities, and ratepayers: slowing data center electricity demand growth (via liquid cooling and efficiency) can reduce pressure on local grids, help defer costly transmission or distribution upgrades, and lower broad electricity costs.
Federal facilities and taxpayers: adopting liquid cooling and heat‑reuse can cut data center energy use and operating costs for government-owned data centers.
Federal and state policymakers, researchers, and technology workers: rapid, independent DOE assessments and recommendations will give evidence-based guidance on R&D gaps, market trends, and investments to accelerate safe, efficient adoption of liquid cooling and heat‑reuse.
The electricity grid and ratepayers: widespread electrification of AI workloads could still materially increase total electricity consumption if efficiency gains or heat‑reuse don't scale, raising costs and emissions.
Hospitals, critical services, and co‑location customers: evaluations may reveal cybersecurity and failure‑mode vulnerabilities in liquid‑cooled systems that, if unaddressed, could lead to service disruptions or data loss.
Taxpayers and federal budgets: transitioning federal data centers to liquid cooling may require significant upfront capital spending paid by taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires GAO and DOE studies and reports on liquid cooling for data centers, with recommendations on R&D, reference architectures, and heat reuse.
Official title: To direct the Comptroller General of the United States to conduct a technology assessment focused on liquid-cooling systems for artificial-intelligence compute clusters and high-performance computing facilities, require the development of Federal Government-wide best-practice guidance for Federal agencies, and for other purposes.
Introduced September 11, 2025 by Jay Obernolte · Last progress September 11, 2025
Requires the Government Accountability Office to review technical, market, cost, and regulatory issues for liquid cooling in data centers and to recommend reference architectures and R&D priorities. The GAO must start within 30 days and deliver a report within 90 days; the Department of Energy must evaluate that report and transmit DOE recommendations within 180 days of receiving it. The review covers direct‑to‑chip and immersion cooling, coolant options, heat‑reuse opportunities, failure scenarios, comparative costs/benefits for HPC and enterprise deployments, and stakeholder input; the law also directs GAO and DOE to jointly designate an industry organization for ongoing consultation.