Title: Developing an Overall CO2 Footprint for Semiconductor Products

Yao, Marissa; Cullen, Michael ; Stewart, Scott
(Intel, Chandler, AZ)

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Understanding the total life cycle CO2 impacts of different types of products and operations has been a subject of significant interest recently. Total life cycle impacts include not just the CO2 generated from the manufacture of a product, but also from the product’s use and from the manufacture of all the inputs that go into creating the product. In theory, understanding this total impact can help manufacturers identify means of reducing the impact and could give consumers information that can be used as a consideration in purchase decisions. Unfortunately, there are to date no broadly accepted and consistent methods for calculating this impact. Determining the boundaries that define which inputs should be included in the assessment is a significant challenge. In addition, supply chains for manufactured products can be highly complicated, involving hundreds or thousands of individual suppliers, all of which have a large number of end customers. Few if any of these suppliers have the ability to collect energy use and CO2 impact data in a way that breaks the impact down by product or customer. This is especially true with complex products like semiconductors, making it very difficult to allocate the CO2 from the supply chain in a way that a customer such as Intel can estimate its portion of the impact from the manufacture of a material that is used by many other customers as well. This paper will present the results of a recent Intel study aimed at defining the boundaries for a life cycle CO2 assessment of its products and operations, and will present the results of the impact of the various stages that were studied.

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