Transparency, Ambition, and Collaboration:

The second edition of the Semiconductor Climate Consortium's decarbonization whitepaper updates the industry's greenhouse gas baseline with company disclosures through 2023, decomposes emissions hotspots across the value chain, and models six scenarios for where industry emissions could go through 2050.

The first edition, developed with Boston Consulting Group in 2023, established the industry's initial baseline. This edition expands coverage to approximately 250 companies, refines the estimation methodology to account for company-level variation, and adds granularity and scenario analysis not present in the prior edition.

SIX KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Seventy-five percent of value chain emissions are Scope 3, driven by the energy consumed by semiconductors deployed in billions of devices worldwide.
2. Electricity remains the industry's single largest decarbonization lever, at approximately 84 percent. No single company can secure that transition alone.
3. The remaining 16 percent is concentrated in upstream materials and process gases, requiring sustained R&D and application-specific change management.
4. Increased granularity across materials, geographies, gases and end uses identifies priority hotspots for targeted clean energy and R&D investment.
5. Industry emissions are expected to rise near term. The modeling indicates that aligning with the 1.5°C pathway would require gross emissions to decline from 2030 onward and a two-stage carbon removal ramp bringing the sector to net-zero Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 2040.
6. Faster demand growth, constrained low-carbon electricity access, slower process gas innovation and geopolitical fragmentation could push actual emissions above the modeled pathway.