Is Semiconductor Manufacturing Sustainable?

The environmental problems caused by the semiconductor industry seem to have been deliberately watered down.

The public's attention to the semiconductor industry often focuses on equipment, software tools, raw materials and so on, which are directly related to production efficiency, but do not seem to pay so much attention to the environmental problems caused by the semiconductor industry. However, with the increasingly prominent impact of global high temperature, frequent extreme weather has a direct impact on the supply of semiconductors, the sustainable development of the semiconductor industry has been extremely urgent.

In 2020, a team from Harvard University published a study that calculates the carbon emissions of the ICT industry, ranging from the manufacture of components to the amount of energy used while the equipment is running, to recycling. The study compiled data from sustainability reports published by many large technology companies, including TSMC, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple. The report found that for these companies, in addition to the power consumption of data centers and other equipment, the hardware manufacturing process is one of the most important sources of carbon emissions, a figure that pushes the pollution of semiconductor manufacturing to the table.

Chip manufacturing requires large amounts of energy and water; many natural resources, such as cobalt, lithium and gold; and various hazardous chemicals, such as perfluorocarbons (PFC), have a global warming potential of up to 10000 times that of carbon dioxide. There is no need to elaborate on the importance of protecting the environment, but is the semiconductor industry aware of the importance of environmental protection enough?

Extreme weather occurs frequently, which directly affects semiconductor production

Greenhouse gas emissions are an important cause of global warming, which leads to frequent extreme weather. From 2021 to the present, the impact of all kinds of extreme weather on the semiconductor industry is directly visible.

After a blizzard in the United States in 2021, several wind turbines in Texas froze and broke down, resulting in a power shortage of 12000 megawatts. In addition, the supply of natural gas for power plants has also been restricted, which has led to the direct shutdown of semiconductor plants such as Samsung, NXP and Infineon in the United States.

Studies have said that global warming may be one of the causes of frequent large earthquakes, while several important areas of semiconductor production, Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines in Southeast Asia are all in the earthquake zone. On the one hand, the earthquake will affect the normal operation of power supply and factory equipment, on the other hand, it will also affect logistics and transportation.

At the same time, global warming has also led to drought in Taiwan, China, while TSMC, the world's largest wafer foundry, consumes a lot of water. During a period of severe water shortage in 2021, TSMC had to spend a lot of money on water resources to maintain production.

Even if we have seen the occurrence of global warming, it is also suffering from the consequences of global warming, but in the face of economic benefits, the government has chosen to provide billions of dollars in subsidies, but the attached conditions have nothing to do with the environment. With the United States and Europe racing to rebuild their chip manufacturing infrastructure, environmental issues are being forgotten because there is no environmental protection part of their bill to attract semiconductor companies.

The demand for chips makes environmental problems ignored

The signing of the Chip and Science Act provides an opportunity for the United States to boost the local semiconductor industry. When the United States introduced semiconductor manufacturing companies into the United States, Volkswagen did not discuss the environmental problems brought about by semiconductor manufacturing. But the impact of the bill should be taken seriously. The government is prepared to inject 52 billion dollars into an industry that consumes energy and produces toxic waste, and the more chips are made, the more electronics are likely to cause energy problems.

New projects from Intel, Samsung Electronics and TSMC are ready to start in many parts of the world. The corporate responsibility reports of these companies show that their electricity and water consumption has been on the rise. McKinsey predicts that the size of the semiconductor industry will reach trillions of dollars by 2030, and there are bigger environmental problems behind the rapid growth of the industry, without pressure from the government. the impact of chipmakers' expansion on environmental problems will depend largely on the chipmakers themselves.

In our article "Semiconductor pollution Paradox", we have introduced the conflict between semiconductor production and environmental protection. Manufacturing semiconductors is a complex and expensive business. Chipmakers' machines and equipment are usually used for less than a decade, and chipmakers need to recover equipment costs and make a profit before the equipment is scrapped. As a result, the chipmaker's factories operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

According to the corporate sustainability reports of Intel and TSMC, the two companies' annual carbon emissions are about 3 million tons and 9 million tons, compared with 50 billion tons of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Although these figures are relatively small compared with the beef industry (the beef industry accounts for nearly 9% of its annual greenhouse gas emissions). But the problem is that there is no end to the world's demand for semiconductors, human beings can not eat beef, but human beings can not return to the era without intelligent technology.

Head chip manufacturers embark on environmental issues

People in the semiconductor industry believe that the chip itself has made the world greener. The national environmental monitoring network, which focuses on the monitoring of air, water and other pollution sources, also needs the application of chip products such as sensors. Instead of discussing the semiconductor industry's merits and demerits for the environment, take action first.

It is unfair to say that the semiconductor industry has completely ignored environmental issues. As many semiconductor giants are emphasizing that sustainable development is an important strategy of the company, we can see that a number of semiconductor manufacturing companies are making efforts to solve environmental problems.

The use of renewable energy has become the main means

Samsung's overseas semiconductor bases in the United States, Europe and China already rely entirely on renewable energy. But Samsung is still trying to develop sustainable energy in other parts of the world, including South Korea, where its largest factory is located. By 2021, only about 16% of Samsung's energy will come from renewable sources, up from 13% in 2020. TSMC also uses clean power to power its overseas operations. But in Taiwan, where most of its factories are located, the total is less than 10 per cent.

According to a recent report, Intel uses renewable energy in 82% of its global business. Intel is doing better in part because it has access to greener energy near its factories in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico. By 2021, 80% of the company's electricity will come from renewable sources. Nevertheless, its total energy use increased by 9.4% during this period to 11.61 billion kilowatt hours. That's about twice the amount used in San Francisco in a year.

According to Intel's recent corporate responsibility report, its emissions of two types of greenhouse gases are 19% lower than in 2000, when total carbon dioxide emissions exceeded 4 million tons. But after falling to less than 2 million tons around 2010, emissions rose again, reaching 3.37 million tons by the end of 2021. Intel says the growing complexity of making chips has once again forced the company's carbon emissions to pick up.

Disposal of waste in production

Chipmakers say they have made significant progress in preventing potentially hazardous materials from entering landfills. They have found ways to reuse or recycle substances critical to the chip production process, such as sulfuric acid and metals. But more production means more waste to be disposed of, which could put pressure on the recycling system.

At present, it is certain that the head of the semiconductor company has gradually been on the right track. Intel produced 344 metric tons of waste in 2021, down from 414 tons the year before, of which only 5% was sent to landfills. Meanwhile, TSMC has dumped less than 1 per cent of its waste for 12 years in a row. Samsung reported a 96% waste recovery rate, and its chip division completed zero emissions from landfills for the first time in 2020.

In addition, the industry has been working to reduce the use of PFC, to find more environmentally friendly alternatives, and to develop improved methods of reducing emissions to destroy PFC when it is used. This includes a long-term partnership with EPA and a new cross-industry R & D program.

Chipmakers are working hard, but the results cannot be achieved overnight, and chipmakers like Intel have pledged to cut emissions and water consumption. Companies with high energy consumption, such as TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix, are trying to use more renewable energy, and so far, the shift to renewable energy has been a key factor in reducing carbon emissions from semiconductor and hardware manufacturing. But even in an optimistic scenario, manufacturing is expected to continue to account for a large share of the industry's carbon footprint.

What is the signal that big companies are leading the way in environmental protection?

For large companies that have been listed, the publication of their carbon accounting reports to the public will also restrain the polluting objects of enterprises to some extent. Globally, large data center-oriented companies such as Google and Facebook, as well as companies such as Intel and TSMC, have made transparent disclosure of carbon indicators within the scope of technology, and have conducted more discussions and proposed solutions to carbon emissions issues.

Intel now aims to reduce emissions to "net zero" by 2040. According to Todd Brady, Intel's chief sustainability officer, Intel is adopting a science-based approach to solving emissions and waste problems, and Intel aims to achieve a "net increase" in water consumption by 2030, which means it will use less water than it produces.

TSMC has pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and Samsung is promoting a new set of standards and guidelines that are said to more accurately reflect the impact of the chip industry. Large companies pay attention to environmental issues, in addition to the sense of responsibility as citizens of the earth, there is also a large part because ESG has become an important part of the company's public information, and will also affect the capital market's judgment of the company's value (affecting the stock price).

Compared with mature semiconductor companies abroad, for domestic semiconductor companies which are still in the stage of development, discussing environmental protection is like a moral kidnapping of "why not eat minced meat". But protecting the environment is for the better development of Chinese semiconductors.

Semiconductor manufacturing.