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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesWhat does semiconductor sustainability mean? It means managing several connected environmental impacts—not earning one all-purpose sustainability score. How sustainable is semiconductor manufacturing? There is no single answer: electricity and greenhouse-gas emissions, water use and basin stress, materials and waste, and impacts across the value chain all matter. Company disclosures offer examples, but their figures are not sector averages and should not be compared without checking their boundaries and methods.
Why semiconductor sustainability has no single score
A chip’s environmental footprint reflects more than the factory where it is made. Electricity consumption, process-related emissions, water withdrawals, materials, waste, suppliers, and the eventual use of products each raise different questions. SEMI treats decarbonization, water, circularity, emissions accounting, and resilience as distinct workstreams in its sustainability resources.
That distinction matters in practice: a company can report progress on renewable electricity while still needing to explain its absolute emissions, water exposure, or upstream supply-chain impacts. A single headline metric can conceal those trade-offs.
Energy and greenhouse gases: related, but not interchangeable
Semiconductor production uses electricity, so the amount consumed and the emissions associated with that electricity are related. But they are not the same measure: the emissions impact depends in part on the power supply and on which emissions categories a company includes. Direct operational emissions and purchased-energy emissions also differ from emissions elsewhere in a product’s value chain.
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Intel’s 2025–26 sustainability disclosure reports that it purchased approximately 99% renewable electricity globally in 2025 and that its 2025 Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse-gas emissions were 16% below its 2019 baseline. These are company-reported results for Intel, not averages for semiconductor manufacturing as a whole.
Intel also reports a reduction of up to 70% in carbon footprint per wafer against a conventional grid-energy baseline. The company describes this as an internal analysis of a 300 mm wafer using a specified Scope 1 and Scope 2 comparison methodology. It is a company-specific estimate, not a universal measure of the footprint of every chip or wafer. See Intel’s semiconductor manufacturing sustainability disclosure for the company’s qualifications and reporting context.
Water: measure operations and local basin risk
Water performance has a local dimension: the significance of a facility’s water use depends partly on the conditions in the basin where it operates. Company-wide totals alone may not show where pressure is concentrated or how water risks affect facilities and communities.
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SEMI’s October 2025 report, Ripple Effects: Water Risk & Resilience Across the Semiconductor Value Chain, analyzed 140 semiconductor production facilities across 89 unique water basins. Those numbers describe the assessment’s coverage; they do not mean that every facility or basin assessed is water-stressed. The report is listed in SEMI’s sustainability resources.
Intel reports that in 2025 it conserved 11.2 billion gallons of water and enabled 2.8 billion gallons for restoration. Those company-reported figures describe different activities; they should not be treated as a basin-level risk assessment or as interchangeable measures of water availability.
Materials and waste: circularity covers both
Circularity is not just a waste-diversion percentage. It also concerns the materials entering production and the potential to reuse, recover, or recycle them. The two sides require different indicators.
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Intel says circular-economy practices were applied to approximately 69% of its manufacturing waste streams in 2025 through reuse, recovery, or recycling. Separately, a 2025 SEMI and imec report prioritized 69 distinct materials for circularity. These figures happen to share a number but measure different things: one is Intel’s reported share of manufacturing waste streams covered by practices, while the other is a count of materials prioritized by the report. The materials report is available from SEMI and imec.
Value-chain emissions change the picture
Factory operations do not capture every emissions source associated with semiconductors. SEMI’s guidance addresses Scope 3 categories including purchased goods (Category 1) and use of sold products (Category 11), alongside work on product carbon-footprint methods. These categories extend accounting beyond direct operations and purchased energy.
When comparing a company’s or product’s emissions, check which categories are included and how emissions are allocated. A figure covering factory operations is not directly comparable to one that also includes supplier inputs or product use. SEMI lists its Scope 3 and product-footprint resources among its sustainability materials.
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Climate resilience is a value-chain issue
Reducing emissions addresses a driver of climate change; resilience concerns the ability of facilities and the value chain to manage climate-related risks. Water availability is one example of a local exposure, but resilience is a separate lens from emissions reduction. SEMI’s sustainability work treats resilience as its own area rather than folding it into one carbon metric.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to compare company disclosures fairly
Intel and TSMC illustrate why a company comparison requires more than lining up headline numbers. Intel reports targets and progress with its own company boundary and accounting presentation. TSMC’s reporting index separates climate, biodiversity, water, and F-GHG materials. Neither company’s reporting should be assumed to use the same scope or definitions as the other’s.
TSMC’s 2024 Sustainability Report listing gives a dated example: 4.4 GW of cumulative renewable-energy procurement contracts and an estimated annual emissions reduction of 5.23 million metric tons. The reduction is explicitly an estimate, and the figures describe TSMC’s 2024 reporting—not a current sector-wide result. TSMC’s sustainability reporting index provides access to its disclosures.
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Before drawing conclusions or ranking companies, compare the following:
- Environmental dimension: energy and carbon, water, materials and waste, or product-use emissions.
- Boundary: direct operations, purchased energy, upstream supply chain, or use of sold products.
- Metric and baseline: absolute emissions or intensity, the baseline year, and whether the unit is a facility, wafer, or another product measure.
- Place and time: facility geography, watershed, reporting year, and electricity-grid context.
- Evidence status: a target, reported outcome, estimate, or independently assured result. Do not treat a company-reported or internally modeled figure as independently verified unless the disclosure establishes that.
SEMI’s materials help explain shared methods and sector challenges; company reports provide company-specific evidence. Intel’s disclosure links its figures to its 2025 Corporate Responsibility Report, while TSMC’s reporting index organizes its topic-specific materials. These sources do not establish a harmonized cross-company ranking.
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