Chip giants join forces to set new targets to reduce semiconductor emissions

A newly formed group of leading hardware manufacturers will meet to discuss how to reduce emissions across the semiconductor supply chain.

Members of the Semiconductor Climate Coalition (SCC), comprising companies including Intel, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC, AMD, Google and Microsoft, will meet at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

The carbon footprint of the semiconductor industry remains a huge issue; despite the increasing use of renewable energy to power semiconductor manufacturing, hardware manufacturing activity continues to dominate the carbon emissions of the largest tech companies, if recent research from Harvard University is to be believed. (opens in new tab)

SCC goals

The founding members all affirmed their support for the Paris Agreement and related agreements that advance the 1.5⁰C pathway, claiming their alignment on the need to “drive climate progress within the semiconductor value chain.”

The SCC was conceptualized by companies meeting under the SEMI Sustainability Initiative and said it will continue to focus on non-climate-related environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The agency claims to be the first global collaboration of semiconductor ecosystem companies focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain.

Members of the coalition say they are committed to a range of goals, including cooperation and coordination on common approaches, technological innovations and communication channels to continuously reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, the organization’s goals include driving more publicly reported progress on Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions each year, as well as setting near- and long-term decarbonization targets to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Semiconductor manufacturing can harm the environment, but it’s certainly not the only part of the IT industry that does so.

For example, according to recent research, data centers used for cloud hosting currently use nearly 1% of global electricity demand or 0.3% of all global carbon dioxide emissions. International Energy Agency. (opens in new tab)