The environmental footprint of chip manufacturing is on the rise. Over the course of half a decade, Taiwan – where most of the world’s high-tech chips are made – has seen increased greenhouse gas emissions, electricity consumption and water usage from its chip manufacturing companies.
The world relies on Taiwan for computer chips found in everything from iPhones to automobiles. Chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) provides about of the world’s most advanced chips used in high-tech products, such as Apple and Sony devices.
at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and his colleagues analysed the corporate social responsibility reports for 16 chip manufacturers in Taiwan, including TMSC, from 2015 to 2020.
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The team found that in that period, carbon emissions from chip manufacturing increased on average by 7.5 per cent each year, electricity consumption by almost 9 per cent per year and water usage by just over 6 per cent per year.
“You can see that just everything is growing, at least for a series of six years,” says Roussilhe. “And it’s growing even more when we look specifically at TSMC.”
The most probable reason for the increase is Taiwan having boosted chip manufacturing output to meet global demand. But another factor is that making more advanced chips requires energy-intensive equipment such as extreme ultraviolet lithography machines that use 50 per cent more electricity than standard chip manufacturing techniques.
It is also particularly hard for manufacturers in Taiwan to switch to less carbon-intensive energy sources. Currently, renewables provide just 5.5 per cent of the country’s electricity.
Chip manufacturing is responsible for around 12 per cent of Taiwan’s annual greenhouse gas emissions – but that could reach between 15 per and 37 per cent of the government-set emissions budget by 2050.
Meanwhile, chip manufacturers use just under 1 per cent of the country’s total water consumption. But the clustering of chip factories near cities means that their water usage can still significantly impact local water supplies.
Taiwanese chip makers already abide by stricter standards for recycling water compared with their counterparts in the US or elsewhere, says at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, who was not involved in the study. But he suggested that reducing emissions will be tough unless Taiwan’s government is willing to consider building more nuclear power plants.
At the moment, the emissions for chip manufacturing are effectively outsourced, but the US and the European Union are looking to boost domestic production. However, legislation slated to help doesn’t talk about sustainability. “We were concerned not to see environmental considerations in there,” says at the University of Louvain in Belgium, part of the team.
The researchers weren’t able to include chip manufacturers based in the US or European Union in their study as none shared electricity or water usage for individual chip factories. “We need much more transparency if we want to assess the industry,” says Roussilhe.
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Article amended on 3 November 2022
We have corrected the amount of Taiwan’s energy that comes from renewable sources.
