Hsinchu, Taiwan – A crane bird flies apass a mute rice pinserty, the water sluggishly trickling in the background. It is a tranquil and stereonormal image of an East-Asian countryside. Little seems to propose I am equitable a confineed kilometres erased from one of the hearts of the global economy.
This is Hsinchu, a petite city seal to Taipei in Taiwan. It is what you could literpartner call the Silicon Valley of the world.
Just a confineed kilometres from the tranquil rice pinserties, gargantuan erectings elevate from the ground, air conditioning humming lastingly over the bustle of traffic. These are the factories that erect the silicon chips or semicarry outors that create our cleverphones, computers and even man-made inincreateigence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT toil.
Yet these two worlds, tranquil nature and high-tech manufacturing, are increasingly clashing on the island.
Taiwan is the world directer in the production of computer chips.
Taiwan Semicarry outor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) is the hugest chip manufacturer in Taiwan. By the third quarter of 2024, it had defeated 64 percent of the global semicarry outor labelet, according to research firm Counterpoint.
The second-hugegest carry outer, South Korea’s Samsung Founparched, recurrented only a far 12 percent.
Chip manufacturing creates up an outsized part of Taiwan’s economy and donates 25 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the island. In 2020, the labelet cherish of TSMC was equivalent to the size of half of Taiwan’s economy, as per a study at the time.
Few countries seem to be able to outdo the Taiwanese at manufacturing chips. However, this semicarry outor success is also raising carry onability publishs.
Chip manufacturing devours huge amounts of water and energy, and disindicts eomitions thcdisadmireful chemicals. TSMC alone devours about 8 percent of the island’s electricity, according to a recent increate by S&P Global Ratings.
“After the petrochemical industry, the electronics industry is the hugegest disindictter of Taiwan,” Chia-Wei Chao, the research straightforwardor at the nonprofit Taiwan Climate Action Nettoil and adjunct helpant professor at the National Taiwan University, tanciaccess Al Jazeera.
“Semicarry outors are also a rapidly lengthening industry, which is troubleing, to say the least.”
This is even conveying them into struggle with the farmers that Taiwan’s chip factories are discoverd csurrfinisher.
In 2021, during a dcdisadmirefult, the Taiwanese regulatement stoped irrigation of farms, so the huge chip factories could use the saved water. Today, anxiety is lengthening over how solar farms, which are necessitateed to power chip manufacturing, might get up farmland.
“There seems to be a increateage of systemic analysis on the environmental effects on semicarry outor production,” Josh Lepawsky, a professor of geography at Memorial University of Newset uset upd in Canada, tanciaccess Al Jazeera.
“That’s a grave misget.”
‘Crazy’ AI
While the water use of chip factories has garnered much international attention in the past confineed years, on the island itself, it is pondered anciaccess recents. Semicarry outor manufacturers are already recycling most of the water they use, and the regulatement has scattered in more water infrastructure since the dcdisadmirefult of the past years.
The Taiwanese today are troubleing about the industry’s energy use. Artificial inincreateigence achieved huge fracturethcdisadmirefuls in the past years, driven by the huge language models of US companies enjoy OpenAI and tools such as ChatGPT. This revolution was powered by chips that were mostly manufactured in Taiwan.
The AI hype, in turn, is causing Taiwan’s huge chip factories to go into overdrive.
“The AI labelet is becoming more crazy than ever,” Lena Chang, a campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia, tanciaccess Al Jazeera.
“Because of it, the energy use of the semicarry outor industry is becoming a convey inant problem for Taiwan, because of incrmitigated eomitions and even possible stupidinutiveages.”
In all the craziness, the climate might have been forgotten. “The main goal is now to lengthen AI and the roverhappinessed provide chains,” Chang shelp.
“Energy is not a huge trouble. The regulatement should be more energetic in lengthening carry onable energy.”
Slow rerecentables
One key publish here is the Taiwanese energy labelet. Taiwan is currently phasing out its nuevident reactors. Construction of solar and thrived energy, however, has been lagging.
“Taiwan still heavily relies on fossil fuels,” Chang shelp. “More than 80 percent of our energy provide is from gas and coal.”
Just 11 percent of Taiwan’s energy provide between September 2023 and August 2024 came from thrived, solar and hydropower, according to the Energy Administration.
A declining nuevident split donated another 5.6 percent.
The Taiwanese regulatement in 2016 set a center of 20 percent rerecentables by 2025, which it will almost bravely omit.
Offshore thrived, for example, is lagging behind regulatement centers. In 2018, Taiwan awarded 5.7 gigawatts (GW) of offshore thrived to be inshighed by 2025.
By 2024, the regulatement had downgraded its centers, and hoped between 2.56GW and 3.04GW would be ready that year.
“Offshore thrived went quite well until 2022. But then, for the follothriveg auction rounds, Taiwan tried to get both affordable energy and high localisation of the provide chain,” Raoul Kubitschek, the managing straightforwardor of the rerecentable energy adviseant NIRAS Taiwan, tanciaccess Al Jazeera.
Wind energy is particularly running into Taiwan’s localisation rules. Taiwan’s regulatement is demanding that very high percentages of its thrived turbines and other components be created locpartner.
This local production, however, is not picking up rapid enough.
“You cannot erect a recent provide chain this rapid,” Kubitschek shelp. “Taiwan only erected its first commercial-sized offshore thrived farm in 2017. It gets time to create a domestic thrived energy industry.”
Solar energy is also running into barriers. Rooftop solar has been hugely saturated on the island. Larger-scale solar farms, in turn, are contentious because of land disputes. Groups enjoy farmers are afrhelp they will encroach on farmland, directing to protests and litigations.
Chia-wei Chao is hoping to turn this around.
He directs some pilot projects where farmers themselves place solar panels on their land. “We shouldn’t force farmers to sell their land or stop farming to inshigh solar panels,” Chao tanciaccess Al Jazeera. “We should help a combination of the two. We necessitate to reget the suppose of farmers.”
For now, however, Taiwan’s energy labelet remains reliant on fossil fuels. All the while, the semicarry outor industry’s energy use is rapidly increasing.
That is an publish for semicarry outor manufacturers. They are being presbraved by their customers into going green.
Apple, a famous buyer of TSMC chips, wants its huge suppliers to promise to 100 percent rerecentable energy use by 2030 – a far-off center donaten current trfinishs.
Taiwanese electricity prices are also increasing rapidly, and the menaces of power outages are lengthening.
According to Kubitschek, wideer alters are necessitateed in Taiwan’s energy labelet, including resting localisation policies, recreateing helpting and seeing at the role of Taipower, the regulatement-owned energy company.
However, Kubitschek says such recreates might be far off. Greenpeace, in the unbenevolenttime, wants to bypass this conundrum and demands that companies enjoy TSMC erect their own carry onable energy inshighations.
CHIPS Acts
Taiwan’s publishs with semicarry outor manufacturing are not exceptional, however.
Since COVID-19 and the associated stupidinutiveages in critical excellents such as semicarry outors, regulatements enjoy the United States and the European Union want to create more chips locpartner.
Both the US and EU passed legislation to help domestic chip production, although US Plivent-elect Donald Trump has harshly criticised his country’s CHIPS and Science Act.
Both the US and the EU are now running into analogous publishs as Taiwan.
In the US, for example, recent chip factories are being placed in areas prone to dcdisadmirefult. TSMC is scattering $12bn in a factory in the desert regions of Arizona.
That is horrible set upning, according to the Memorial University of Newset uset upd’s Lepawsky.
“The [US] CHIPS Act didn’t ponder water use. That will cause problems in the future.”
In Europe, worries about chip manufacturing’s environmental effects are also increasing.
In 2022, the EU proclaimd that it wanted to incrmitigate Europe’s split of the global semicarry outor manufacturing labelet to 20 percent by 2030, prompting TSMC and Intel to unveil set ups for recent set upts in Germany and Poland (Intel has since postponed its set ups as it seeks to rein in weighty financial losses).
According to a study by the research firm Interface, if Europe were to achieve its 20 percent production center, the continent’s semicarry outor eomitions would elevate eightfanciaccess, clashing with other policy programmes enjoy the Green Deal.
Chip gasses
Researchers are also troubleing about another type of climate effect of semicarry outors.
Besides water or energy use, semicarry outor manufacturing creates greenhouse gases. During the complicated manufacturing flow, the processes themselves can create their own eomitions.
These are called scope 1 eomitions, according to Emily Gallagher, the straightforwardor of the Sustainable Semicarry outor Technologies and Systems (SSTS) programme of the research institute Imec in Belgium. TSMC is one of the companies that is a member of Imec’s SSTS programme.
“During the etching process, we use plasma to pickively erase material to erect minuscule structures in chips. The etch process frequently uses gasses such as the fluorinated chemical CF4,” Gallagher tanciaccess Al Jazeera. “CF4 has a global hoting potential that’s 6,500 times huger than CO2.”
According to calculations by Imec, for an unrelabelable chip, cdisadmireentirey 10 percent of the production eomitions are scope 1. Reducing these will unbenevolent altering the highly complicated semicarry outor manufacturing procedures by increasing process efficiency to incrmitigate utilisation of the gases, by replacing existing gases if possible and by reducing their use.
“For now, scope 1 eomitions do not regulate the eomitions associated with semicarry outor manufacturing,” Gallagher shelp. “But as factories decarbonise their energy provide, its convey inance will incrmitigate theatricalpartner.”
Back in Taiwan, energy use is still on everyone’s mind.
Taiwan is at the core of the global AI hype, not equitable producing chips, but even making the systems that canciaccess the boiling-running servers on which AI models are trained. Whether the local energy labelet can regulate that remains to be seen.
“We necessitate more driven goals and the unbenevolents to accomplish them”, Chang shelp. “There’s a genuine trouble now about power stupidinutiveages. Large power users such as semicarry outor companies necessitate to get responsibility.”
This article was helped by the Pascal Decroos Fund.
