The chip manufacturing industry: Environmental impacts and eco-efficiency analysis

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Industrial Engineering
• Materials Science

Background:

• Semiconductor manufacturing increasingly relies on outsourced fabrication, with many chip companies becoming "fabless" and commissioning production to specialized wafer "foundries" or "fabs."
• Assessing the environmental footprint of these foundries is crucial due to the sector's strategic importance and resource-intensive nature.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze and assess the environmental impacts and eco-efficiency of leading global semiconductor foundries for the first time.
• To investigate the relationship between company size, technological capacity, and environmental performance in the semiconductor fabrication sector.
• To identify key environmental challenges facing the semiconductor industry.

Main Methods:

• Calculation and analysis of key environmental performance indicators (KEPIs) using data from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports of semiconductor foundries.
• Homogenization of original company data and indicators to obtain raw data in absolute value.
• Adoption of a common manufacturing index (MI) to derive comparable performance indicators and KEPIs for a comprehensive assessment.

Main Results:

• A comparative assessment revealed the current resource consumption and pollution levels across leading semiconductor foundries.
• Contrary to trends in other industries, larger company size, higher value added per wafer, and advanced technological capacity in semiconductor foundries are not consistently linked to lower per-unit consumption of water, energy, or reduced waste and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
• The study highlights significant environmental challenges for the semiconductor industry.

Conclusions:

• The semiconductor industry faces unique challenges where scale and technological advancement do not automatically translate to improved environmental efficiency.
• Foundry firms, particularly those with cutting-edge technologies, need to significantly increase investment in optimizing resource utilization.
• Future efforts must focus on further reducing greenhouse gas emissions and waste generation within semiconductor fabrication processes.