A surprising group of skilled tradespeople stands to benefit from the boom in AI data centers: pipefitters.

The powerful servers needed to run data centers give off tremendous amounts of heat. Without adequate cooling, those servers would quickly fail. And cooling systems require massive quantities of water. In The Dalles, Oregon for example, Google data centers consumed more than more than 355 million gallons of water in 2021.

That’s where pipefitters come in. Whether a data center uses an evaporative cooling system or a heat-exchange system, pipefitters have to get the water where it needs to go.

There’s a slight irony here. One reason younger people are attracted to the skilled trades is that pipefitters, electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs aren’t likely to be replaced by AI. And in this case, the rise of AI data centers is actually increasing demand for skilled workers.