All wastewater is treated before being discharged into the environment. In 2022, STMicro said its water recycling rate reached 42%, a 2-point increase compared with 2021, and expects to reach its goal of 50% by 2025. Its ambition is to improve its water efficiency by 20% by 2025. In its 2023 Sustainability report, STMicro reported it had reduced its water consumption per unit of production by 12% in 2022 compared with 2016. Water is a limited natural resource, and manufacturing semiconductors requires a large volume of water to cool equipment or to generate ultra-pure water. The demonstrators were protesting the 300-mm fab announced last summer by STMicro and GlobalFoundries, which they associate with excessive water consumption. “Water, not chips”: This was the message on some placards carried by peace demonstrators outside the STMicroelectronics (STMicro) Crolles plant in early April. Speaking more specifically about Infineon’s €5-billion (about $5.3 billion) Smart Power Fab in Dresden, he said, “We want to take the new fab to the next level and put more measures in place in order to become the most efficient fab towards carbon neutrality in 2030.” Reducing, reusing, recycling But if you look at the amount of CO2 that we emit to produce those chips and the amount of energy that we save with our products over their lifetime, it is an effect of one to 33. “To produce our chips, we are using energy. “If I look today at the Infineon fabs compared to the average semiconductor fabs, in terms of energy usage or water consumption, we are everywhere on the lower part of the distribution, and in a number of cases, we are actually 50% lower than the average,” Wijburg said. The company aims to be 100% on renewable power globally by 2025. In May 2022, its manufacturing site in Austin, Texas, followed suit, and Infineon completed the switchover to green electricity in the U.S. In 2021, Infineon switched to purchasing 100% green electricity for its manufacturing sites in Europe. “We still find it very important that we are leading as a company in carbon neutrality, and our facility in the United States is purchasing green electricity.”Īchieving the net-zero goal first requires companies to identify how they buy, use and track energy. “We use green electricity, not only in Germany but also in the United States where energy is very cheap relative to Europe,” he said. When asked whether Infineon is using renewable energy, Wijburg replied with an assertive “yes.” Compared with the global average value of the WSC, Infineon’s front-end sites worldwide used about 53% less electricity to manufacture one square centimeter wafer in 2021, the company said in its latest sustainability report. The World Semiconductor Council (WSC) has defined electricity consumed per square centimeter manufactured wafer as the unit for measuring the energy efficiency of front-end sites. Within its manufacturing sites, the front-end sites consume most of the energy, especially when establishing the highly stable climatic conditions of cleanrooms.Semiconductor Manufacturing on the Way to Net Zer In 2022, Infineon consumed 2,568 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy worldwide. Over the years, many semiconductor companies have expanded their green energy supply, some even investing in their own renewable energy infrastructure. One of the key steps toward achieving semiconductor sustainability is using renewable energy sources. It is also expected to consume 237 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity globally in 2030, close to Australia’s 2021 electricity consumption, according to environmental group Greenpeace. The global semiconductor manufacturing industry is set to double its market size in terms of revenue by 2030, with some sectors, such as electric vehicles (EVs), expected to grow relatively faster than others. (Source: EE Times Europe) Powering fabs with renewable energy Attending the ceremony were (from left to right) Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer, EC President Ursula von der Leyen, Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck and German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. This will be the most efficient fab.” On May 2, Infineon Technologies broke ground on its new 300-mm Smart Power Fab in Dresden. Wijburg acknowledged that achieving the last 30% will be the most difficult to achieve, but said that “in this new facility, we’ll put all the most modern techniques in place in order to recycle energy and water.
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