The IT industry faces major challenges when it comes to climate protection. A significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the complex production of semiconductors, which are used in all IT products. A new report from the SEMI Semiconductor Climate Consortium (SCC), developed with significant involvement from the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM, addresses precisely this issue: It creates the basis for greater transparency and comparability in the product carbon footprint (PCF) in the semiconductor and IT industry.
While the previously frequently used corporate carbon footprint (CCF) looks at the emissions of entire companies, the PCF enables a much more precise analysis at product level. This allows emission drivers along the entire value chain – from semiconductor production to data center hardware – to be identified at product level and reduced in a targeted manner.
High pressure to act due to ambitious climate targets
Cloud providers, data center operators and suppliers to the automotive industry in particular are dependent on reliable and comparable key figures due to ambitious climate targets. Discussions between life cycle assessment experts at Fraunhofer IZM and more than 25 companies from the semiconductor and IT industry show that The carbon footprint of semiconductor manufacturing accounts for a significant proportion of the total emissions of IT hardware and in recent years the demand for PCF data has increased considerably. However, without reliable, comparable and action-oriented PCF data, concrete savings potentials can often not be precisely quantified and therefore often remain unused.
Common standards as the key
The first report following the analysis of the needs of the participating companies emphasizes that transparent data, uniform calculation methods and standardized exchange formats are crucial to effectively reduce emissions. Platforms such as Catena-X[1], which are already used in the automotive industry for secure and standardized data exchange and are currently being extended to the semiconductor industry thanks to funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in the Semiconductor-X project, serve as a model for other industries. Fraunhofer IZM experts are also involved in the project work.
With the “Product Carbon Footprint Strategy and Methodology Development Report”, the SEMI Semiconductor Climate Consortium presents the first comprehensive inventory of the PCF in the semiconductor and IT industry. The report analyzes existing guidelines and requirements in the field of information and communication technology and proposes a strategic roadmap for the development of a PCF methodology specifically tailored to semiconductor manufacturing.
Implementation planned by 2027
The strategy report, which is accessible to member companies of the Semiconductor Climate Consortium, marks the first phase of the overall project. In a second phase, the recommendations are to be implemented by March 2027. Fraunhofer IZM will moderate the process, reconcile the interests of the companies involved and develop best-practice approaches for assessing the greenhouse gas emissions of individual semiconductor components.
This initiative is part of a series of activities at Fraunhofer IZM aimed at making the product carbon footprint in the IT industry more methodologically precise, practical and action-oriented – for notebooks, desktop computers and data center equipment, among other things. The aim is to effectively support the IT industry on its way to a more climate-friendly future.
Further information on the Semiconductor Climate Consortium: www.semi.org/en/industry-groups/semiconductor-climate-consortium
[1] Further information on CATENA-X: https://catena-x.net/use-case-cluster/sustainability/
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Further links
👉 www.izm.fraunhofer.de
Photo: Fraunhofer IZM | Artur Templiner
