As a CEO and member of the Environmental Technologies Trade Advisory Committee, a group of private-sector leaders that advises the U.S. Department of Commerce, I have had a front-row seat to a growing realization: the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is no longer just a software story. It is an infrastructure story — and the technologies required to support it will shape economic leadership for decades.
That recognition has driven recent recommendations from the committee on how environmental and industrial technologies can help meet accelerating global AI demand. But it also raises a more immediate and local question: where will these solutions be developed, deployed, and exported from?
For America, the answer could be decisive.
AI Is An Infrastructure Challenge, Not Just A Digital One
AI systems depend on far more than algorithms and data. They require massive amounts of reliable electricity, resilient energy storage, high-quality industrial water systems, and supply chains that are not vulnerable to geopolitical disruption. As AI data centers and advanced manufacturing facilities scale, the strain on physical infrastructure is becoming impossible to ignore.
These pressures are already familiar throughout the United States. Projects stall not because technology doesn't exist, but because deployment pathways are slow, fragmented, or poorly aligned with real-world operating conditions. Water scarcity, grid constraints, emerging contaminants such as PFAS, and permitting delays increasingly shape what can be built and where.
Yet America is also uniquely positioned to solve these challenges — and to export the solutions globally.
What The Committee Is Seeing
From a national and international vantage point, one pattern is clear: countries pairing innovation with rapid deployment are pulling ahead. Europe and parts of Asia are aligning their industrial policies, procurement, and export strategies to accelerate the transition of technologies from validation to scale.
The United States has extraordinary technical advantages. But too often, innovators are left to navigate commercialization alone, without coordinated validation, early procurement, or clear pathways to global markets. The result is that technologies invented here are sometimes scaled elsewhere.
This gap is especially visible in sectors critical to AI infrastructure, including water treatment and reuse, contaminant destruction, energy storage, industrial resource recovery, and emissions control.
Environmental Innovation Advantage
American companies and research institutions are leading the development of advanced environmental and industrial technologies, including:
- Water treatment and reuse systems that protect industrial productivity while dramatically reducing freshwater demand
- PFAS and emerging contaminant destruction technologies that move beyond containment toward permanent solutions
- Advanced battery energy storage capable of supporting grid stability without reliance on fragile foreign mineral supply chains
- Waste-to-value and industrial resource recovery platforms that convert liabilities into economic assets
- Air quality and emissions control technologies that enable growth while protecting public health
These are not theoretical capabilities. They are proven innovations awaiting faster pathways to deployment and scale.
From Compliance Leadership to Export Leadership
For example, my home state of California has long set the pace on environmental standards, driving innovation and improving public health. That leadership remains vital. But meeting the demands of AI infrastructure requires complementing compliance with an enablement mindset—one that accelerates validation, procurement, and early adoption of advanced technologies across every state of the union.
When deployment happens at home, export leadership follows. When it doesn't, the jobs, factories, and long-term economic benefits often go elsewhere.
Global demand for AI-ready infrastructure is accelerating. Energy storage, water resilience, contaminant control, and circular manufacturing are becoming prerequisites for economic growth worldwide. America can either be a supplier of these solutions — or a customer of technologies scaled abroad.
A Moment That Will Define the Next Decade
These opinions are my own, and I do not speak for the trade advisory committee or the Department of Commerce. But I can say this. The committee's work reflects a broader truth: the technologies that support AI will determine not only where innovation happens, but who captures its economic value. The U.S. innovation ecosystem has always thrived when bold ideas were matched with decisive action.
This is another such moment.
By aligning innovation with faster deployment and export positioning, America can power the world's AI future while strengthening its own economy, supply chains, and communities. The opportunity is here. The question is whether we act quickly enough to seize it.
[Editor's note: This opinion piece is based on an essay that appeared in Forbes Business Councils.]
Dennis Calvert is President and CEO of BioLargo, a Westminster-based cleantech company. He is a member of the Forbes Business Councils, serves on the Environmental Technologies Trade Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Department of Commerce, and chairs its Enabling Innovative Technology subcommittee.
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