A new report from think tank Interface has found that the level of semiconductor manufacturing the European Union (EU) is hoping to foster under the EU Chips Act could cause the continent’s industry to generate as much greenhouse gas as the chemical, iron and steel, and aviation sectors.
Interface argues that if the political bloc achieves its aims of increasing its global semiconductor production capacity from eight percent to 20 percent by 2030, the sector’s emissions could increase up to eightfold.
While a lot of environmental and sustainability concerns are being raised about the amount of power consumed by data centers that have deployed GPUs to support AI-intensive workloads, Interface highlights that the semiconductor manufacturing process can be equally damaging to the environment.
The report says that the best-case scenario under current plans would see semiconductor-related emissions on the continent reach approximately 40 megatons by 2030, up from around 10 megatons in 2021. The worst-case scenario would see the sector’s emissions exceed 100 megatons, surpassing more traditional emission-heavy industries.
Furthermore, finding alternatives to dangerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as ‘forever chemicals,’ is also a long and complicated process due to the industry’s current dependency on them and the regulatory hurdles that any substitutes would have to pass.
The report also notes that due to the supply chain challenges that have dominated the semiconductor industry in recent years, companies often excuse their failure to meet sustainability targets on the need to meet the ever-growing demand for chips.
To illustrate this, Interface highlights the fact that 74 percent of Apple’s annual emissions stem from its manufacturing output, with the semiconductors used to produce its electronics making up half of the company’s greenhouse gas output.
Transitioning the industry to more sustainable production methods is likely to be a lengthy process, with the report stating that increasing renewable energy use, developing chemical cleaning solutions, and bringing non-PFAS chemical alternatives to market could take decades.
The report also criticized the lack of available data to asses what it called the true ecological footprint of the semiconductor industry, with any assessment “hampered by insufficient data and a lack of standardization, especially concerning scope 3 emissions and the differentiation between front-end and back-end processes.”
It concludes: “It is imperative to act now and ensure that both current and future capacity expansion strategies prioritize climate and environmental considerations.”
