From Silicon Shield to Carbon Lock-in ? The Environmental Footprint of Electronic Components Manufacturing in Taiwan (2015-2020)

TL;DR

This study analyzes the environmental impact of Taiwanese electronic component manufacturers from 2015 to 2020, revealing increasing emissions and resource use, which may hinder Taiwan's sustainability goals and create a carbon lock-in.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive assessment of the environmental footprint of Taiwanese electronics manufacturers over six years, highlighting the risk of carbon lock-in and implications for global technology development.

Findings

GHG emissions increased by 7.5% annually

Energy and water consumption grew significantly

Manufacturing volume correlates strongly with environmental footprint

Abstract

Taiwan plans to rapidly increase its industrial production capacity of electronic components while concurrently setting policies for its ecological transition. Given that the island is responsible for the manufacturing of a significant part of worldwide electronics components, the sustainability of the Taiwanese electronics industry is therefore of critical interest. In this paper, we survey the environmental footprint of 16 Taiwanese electronic components manufacturers (ECM) using corporate sustainability responsibility reports (CSR). Based on data from 2015 to 2020, this study finds out that our sample of 16 manufacturers increased its greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions by 7.5\% per year, its final energy and electricity consumption by 8.8\% and 8.9\%, and the water usage by 6.1\%. We show that the volume of manufactured electronic components and the environmental footprints compiled in this study are strongly correlated, which suggests that relative efficiency gains are not sufficient to curb the environmental footprint at the national scale. Given the critical nature of electronics industry for Taiwan's geopolitics and economics, the observed increase of energy consumption and the slow renewable energy roll-out, these industrial activities could create a carbon lock-in, blocking the Taiwanese government from achieving its carbon reduction goals and its sustainability policies. Besides, the European Union, the USA or even China aim at developing an industrial ecosystem targeting sub-10nm CMOS technology nodes similar to Taiwan. This study thus provides important insights regarding the environmental implications associated with such a technology roadmap. All data and calculation models used in this study are provided as supplementary material.