{"id":3800,"date":"2023-07-05T11:02:53","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T11:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cic.vc\/?p=3800"},"modified":"2023-07-17T11:05:47","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T11:05:47","slug":"fixing-chipmakings-dirty-climate-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cic.vc\/fixing-chipmakings-dirty-climate-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing chipmaking\u2019s dirty climate secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chiayi-Tainan Plain, traditionally one of Taiwan\u2019s key agricultural regions, remained\u00a0largely unplanted<\/a>\u00a0this spring, marking the region\u2019s third consecutive year without a full harvest. After another season of low rainfall, local authorities offered farmers\u00a0subsidies<\/a>\u00a0to hold off on planting their rice. With water in scarce supply, Taiwan prioritised its prized semiconductor plants \u2014 the country\u2019s so-called \u2018silicon shield<\/a>\u2018 against the threat of an invasion by Beijing. Nearby, once-abundant rice paddies looked barren:\u00a0cracked brown earth<\/a>\u00a0interspersed with a few wilting blades of grass.<\/p>\n

Semiconductor manufacturing, or chipmaking, is an extremely thirsty business. According to the company\u2019s latest\u00a0sustainability report<\/a>, Taiwan\u2019s semiconductor vanguard, TSMC, used 82.8 million metric tonnes of water to make 14.2 million semiconductor wafers in 2021. That\u2019s around 5,840 litres \u2014 or nineteen fully-brimming\u00a0bathtubs<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 per chip, although the water used to produce some of the most-advanced chips at TSMC\u2019s future plant in Arizona is estimated to reach up to\u00a0three times that figure<\/a>. This immense sum puts huge pressure on\u00a0drought-struck regions<\/a>\u00a0in Taiwan, which produces more than 60% of the world\u2019s semiconductors, including 90% of the most-advanced ones.<\/p>\n

Semiconductors power everything from iPhones to EVs. They\u2019ll be essential for the green transition, enabling renewable energy technologies and optimising energy efficiency. Even so, their production poses ecological obstacles of its own, extending far beyond its immense thirst. Semiconductor manufacturing is projected to consume 237 terawatt hours of electricity globally by 2030, according to\u00a0Greenpeace East Asia<\/a>. That\u2019s roughly equivalent to Australia\u2019s\u00a0total electricity consumption<\/a>\u00a0in 2021. The sector\u2019s also on track to emit 86 million tons of CO2 equivalent in 2030 \u2014 more than twice Portugal\u2019s total emissions in 2021.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0geopolitical tensions<\/a>\u00a0push nations to reconsider their offshore semiconductor\u00a0supply chains<\/a>, there are also mounting sustainability pressures facing the industry. Some of the sector\u2019s biggest clients \u2014 including giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Google \u2014 have set ambitious net-zero targets that, according to analysis by\u00a0McKinsey<\/a>, will require major reform in chipmaking, which remains one of the biggest contributors to their corporate\u00a0carbon footprints<\/a>. There\u2019s broad recognition that production needs to go green, but less consensus on what \u2014 and how much \u2014 manufacturing companies should be doing. Are they really reaching for the (sustainability) stars?<\/p>\n

Cutting chipmaking\u2019s carbon costs<\/h3>\n

Some chipmakers have answered the call for a green revolution by setting their own targets. German manufacturer\u00a0Infineon<\/a>\u00a0plans to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 70 percent by 2025, compared with its 2019 baseline, and aspires to reach carbon neutrality for emissions directly under its control by the end of 2030. US chipmaking giant\u00a0Intel<\/a>\u00a0has committed, as of 2022, to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in its global operations by 2040 and has targeted achieving 100% use of renewable electricity as an interim milestone in 2030.\u00a0TSMC<\/a>, the world\u2019s largest chipmaker, has, meanwhile, pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. In 2020, the company signed the\u00a0world\u2019s largest<\/a>\u00a0renewable corporate power deal, agreeing to buy up the full output of a 920 megawatt offshore wind farm in the Taiwan Strait.<\/p>\n

Gas abatement can solve some, if not all, of the chipmaking climate dilemma. Common semiconductor manufacturing processes, including wafer etching and chamber cleaning, rely on highly toxic greenhouse gases, including nitrogen, argon, and perfluorocarbons (PFCs) \u2014 greenhouse gases with a considerably higher global warming potential than CO2<\/sub>. These were Intel\u2019s\u00a0primary source<\/a>\u00a0of direct emissions in 2021 and are a key focus of the company\u2019s sustainability strategy. Through gas abatement \u2014 which involves changing the chemical compositions of toxic gases before they\u2019re released into the environment \u2014 manufacturers hope to minimise, if not entirely eliminate, the noxious warming effects.<\/p>\n

But more ambitious than abatement, some industry players, including Intel, are trying to find ways to switch out these toxic gases entirely. This, says Ondrej Burkacky, a semiconductor analyst at McKinsey, \u201cis often technically tricky because we are operating at very limits of physics.\u201d Nevertheless, he says he\u2019s cheered by collaborative efforts, like the\u00a0SEMI Sustainability Initiative<\/a>, which are uniting leading industrial figures, chemists, and gas suppliers to fund research into alternative chemical compounds for chipmaking.<\/p>\n

TSMC<\/a>, meanwhile, has been working to serve its plants\u2019 insatiable thirst without totally depleting Taiwan\u2019s resources. Reclaimed water is expected to replace over 60% of the total water consumption at TSMC\u2019s fabs in Taiwan by 2030, according to\u00a0Global Water Intelligence<\/a>. Moreover, TSMC\u2019s\u00a0first water-recycling plant<\/a>\u00a0in the Southern Taiwan Science Park went into operation in September 2022. It is currently capable of supplying the chip plant\u2019s daily water requirements of 10,000 tonnes, and capacity could grow to 36,000 tonnes daily by 2026. \u201cCircularity can be, and should be, improved,\u201d says Burkacky. That\u2019s not just a question of sustainability, but also sheer practicality. If you don\u2019t have enough water at any given time, you\u2019ll have to shut the plant down, he says. \u201cIf you shut down a chemical plant, that means two-to-three weeks to bring it back up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond silicon<\/h3>\n

Nevertheless, there\u2019s still a long way to go to achieve a green chip supply chain, and sustainable developments might be offset by increased demand for more sophisticated semiconductors. Indeed, as it ramped up chip output to meet rising demand in 2020, TSMC\u00a0missed key sustainability targets<\/a>\u00a0for water usage and waste generation.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still an inherent tension in the sector between technical progress and environmental sustainability, according to Scott White, who founded chipmaking company Pragmatic Semiconductor in Cambridge in 2010. \u201cMost of the industry is focused on innovating in the direction of better performance [and] more complexity,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s actually been going the wrong way from an environmental perspective because they\u2019ve been trying to continually enable more functionality.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the biggest environmental problem might actually be silicon itself, says White. His company, Pragmatic, aims to eliminate silicon as the basic material for semiconductor devices, instead employing flexible integrated circuits (FlexICs) based on thin-film transistors. These materials, explains White, aren\u2019t comparable to high-end semiconductors (\u201cIt definitely will not replace all silicon,\u201d he says), but could replicate the performance of mature-node or legacy-node chips.<\/p>\n

Pragmatic\u2019s chips might not be sophisticated enough to completely power our iPhones or EVs, but White argues that cutting the emissions of the basic tools could have a big impact. \u201cThe vast majority of chips actually do much simpler functions,\u201d says White. Modern-day cars tend to have upwards of 1,400 chips inside them. \u201cOnly a couple of those are the engine controller and things that need to be high-performance,\u201d says White. \u201cMost of the chips are doing very simple tasks, like making the windscreen wipers work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018By using flexible semiconductors for the myriad tasks where \u2018just enough\u2019 performance is more than enough, we can free silicon \u2013 with its weightier environmental overheads \u2013 to tackle the big-ticket items,\u2019 argues\u00a0Pragmatic\u2019s latest sustainability report<\/a>. Nevertheless, moving beyond silicon on a broader scale will still take time, says Burkacky.\u00a0 \u201cThis is something which not only [needs to] work in a lab, it needs to work in a highly-industrialised environment at a certain cost level.\u201d<\/p>\n

We might, however, have reached a pivotal moment for industrial awareness and development, says White. Eco-friendly improvements are being driven not just by consumer and government pressure, but also straightforward practicalities, like the limited water supplies in the Chiayi-Tainan Plain.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs always, it could go faster and it could go better,\u201d says Burkacky. \u201cBut I think what makes me positive is that there is really this demand from customers.\u201d He\u2019s also optimistic that future chip iterations will keep facilitating more energy-efficient machines \u2014 even if the manufacturing industry has a long way to go to clean up its act. \u201cI\u2019m not worried that more semiconductors means more problems,\u201d says Burkacky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chiayi-Tainan Plain, traditionally one of Taiwan\u2019s key agricultural regions, remained\u00a0largely unplanted\u00a0this spring, marking the region\u2019s third consecutive year without a full harvest. After another season of low rainfall, local authorities offered farmers\u00a0subsidies\u00a0to hold off on planting their rice. With water in scarce supply, Taiwan prioritised its prized semiconductor plants \u2014 the country\u2019s so-called \u2018silicon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,29],"tags":[50],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFixing chipmaking\u2019s dirty climate secret - Cambridge Innovation Capital<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cic.vc\/fixing-chipmakings-dirty-climate-secret\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fixing chipmaking\u2019s dirty climate secret - Cambridge Innovation Capital\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Chiayi-Tainan Plain, traditionally one of Taiwan\u2019s key agricultural regions, remained\u00a0largely unplanted\u00a0this spring, marking the region\u2019s third consecutive year without a full harvest. After another season of low rainfall, local authorities offered farmers\u00a0subsidies\u00a0to hold off on planting their rice. 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