Chip giants join together in new aim to cut down semiconductor emissions

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

Members of the Semiconductor Climate Consortium (SCC), made up of the likes of Intel, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC, AMD, Google, and Microsoft, will hold sessions at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt.

The semiconductor industry’s carbon footprint remains a huge problem; despite the growing use of renewable energy to power semiconductor manufacturing, hardware manufacturing activities continue to dominate the carbon output of the largest tech firms, if recent research from Havard University is to be believed.

SCC aims

The founding members have all affirmed their support for the Paris Agreement and related accords driving the 1.5⁰C pathway, and claim that they are aligned 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 says it will continue to focus on non-climate related Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) issues.

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

The consortium’s members say they are committed to working toward a number of objectives including collaboration and alignment on common approaches, technology innovations, and communications channels to continuously reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, the group’s aims include pushing for more publicly reported progress on Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions annually as well as a setting near- and long-term decarbonization targets with the aim of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

Semiconductor manufacturing might be hurting the environment, but it certainly isn’t the only part of the IT industry doing so.

For example, data centers used in cloud hosting currently use nearly 1% of global electricity demand or 0.3% of all global CO2 emissions, according to recent research from the International Energy Agency.

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