Citing a report from Computerworld, a few days before the UN’s annual climate change conference (COP26),Apple has joined the Sustainable Semiconductor Technology and System (SSTS) program.SSTS is an initiative designed to help reduce the environmental impact of computer processor manufacturing and to create new technologies, design footprints, and manufacturing processes for this purpose.
Picture fromIMEC
All the time,AppleThe company is an advocate of green energy, and it is also a company that supports climate change actions in practice and preaching. Its participation is not surprising. Apple is committed to achieving full carbon neutrality in its supply chain and products by 2030. Apple has even persuaded more than 100 of its suppliers to join its pledge to completely switch to renewable energy. On Wednesday, Apple outlined its broader climate initiatives.
SSTS was formed by the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre, hoping to “predict the environmental impact of choices made during the chip technology definition phase.” Computerworld said: “The core of this project is to help chip designers reduce the ecological footprint of the processors they create. This is an open attempt to combine the development of processors with the fight against climate change.”
The chip manufacturing process is a huge energy consumer, using large amounts of chemicals, rare materials and water. It also produces large amounts of greenhouse gases as a by-product. TSMC, Apple’s main chip maker, uses nearly 5% of Taiwan’s total electricity production every year and used 63 million tons of water in 2019. The SSTS initiative aims to equip the entire chip supply chain with measures to deal with climate change, from the design of processors by companies such as Apple, to the production of semiconductor foundries such as TSMC, and the use of it by consumers.