As the AI revolution encounters growing pushback, the environmental cost of data centers has emerged as a major concern. U.S. data center demand is projected to double between 2025 and 2027, intensifying scrutiny of the energy and water resources these facilities consume. AI training and inference workloads require increasingly dense server racks that generate far more heat than conventional computing, pushing traditional air-cooling methods toward their limits. More than 1,200 employees at leading AI labs signed a statement this week asking the U.S. government to help build tools to slow development, while workers and industry leaders alike are pressing policymakers to address the technology's impact on jobs.

Christophe Beck, CEO of Ecolab (No. 280 on the Fortune 500), says he has committed $7 billion over the past six months to tackle one of the most pressing issues: water usage. A single data center facility can consume millions of gallons of water per day, much of it through evaporative cooling systems that vent water into the air. Beck recently closed a $4.75 billion acquisition of Calgary-based liquid-cooling company CoolIT, alongside related investments designed to expand Ecolab's role in advanced water management for high-tech industries.

The deal illustrates how established industrial players are positioning themselves within an AI-driven economy. As major hyperscalers including Google, Microsoft, and Meta work toward their own commitments to replenish more water than they consume by 2030, demand for advanced cooling and water-reuse technologies is expected to grow sharply. For this 103-year-old company, the acquisition deepens its involvement beyond water treatment to include the design of chip-cooling systems, energy usage optimization, and overall systems management.

"The whole idea is helping companies produce better products, outcomes, yield, and data in ways that are respectful of communities and natural resources," Beck said. "We protect a third of the world's food production, a quarter of the power that's generated, 1.7 billion people from infection, and enough water for the drinking needs of 850 million."

CoolIT will enable Ecolab to accelerate its high-margin business of supplying ultra-pure water for semiconductor manufacturing, cooling water for power generation, and broader water management services. The acquisition provides access to closed-loop technology that captures heat from high-density chips without spraying or evaporating water into the air—a mission-critical capability as data center densities increase and facilities face growing constraints on local water supplies.

"We can generate power, we can't generate water … we have communities pushing back for a bunch of right reasons," Beck said. "Now we have a solution that's really allowing us to make data centers water-neutral."

Beck emphasized that the strategy also reinforces Ecolab's sustainability commitments and its brand promise of "protecting what's vital." The company's 2030 ambition, originally outlined in 2019, targets cutting carbon emissions in half, helping customers conserve 300 billion gallons of water annually, and protecting 2 billion people from foodborne illnesses.

As Beck put it: "What's not to like? More money, more growth, better impact and unleashing the best industries in the world."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.