Partner Profile

Intel Corporation
Location	Santa Clara, CA
Goal	Intel Corporation pledges to reduce global GHG emissions by 30 percent per production unit from 2004 to 2010.
Environmental Web Site
Company Description Intel is the world's largest semiconductor chip maker. The company's products include chips, boards and other semiconductor components that are the building blocks for computers, servers, and networking and communications products. Intel's products are used in computer systems, handheld computing devices, communication and networking devices, and a wide range of industrial equipment. "At Intel, we consider global warming an important and serious issue, and we are proactively addressing the threat of global climate change," says Rick Kroon, Director, Environmental Health and Safety. "To this end, we have assessed our climate change footprint, and have focused our efforts on three main areas: greenhouse gas emissions from our operations, energy usage in our operations, and the energy efficiency of our products. We have made significant investment and progress in all three areas. We believe that working in partnership with the EPA is an important part of our overall efforts to combat climate change; we are proud to be a member of the Climate Leaders program."
Reasons for Joining Climate Leaders Intel has a long history of establishing environmental goals for its operations and making these goals known to the public through annual Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) reports and other means. Typically these goals have dealt with resource consumption, recycling, or pollutant discharges.
GHG Reductions Before Joining Climate Leaders Prior to joining Climate Leaders, Intel had already established goals for energy efficiency and reducing perfluorocompound (PFC) emissions, which are the two main components of Intel’s GHG emissions. Intel helped drive a worldwide semiconductor industry agreement to reduce emissions through the World Semiconductor Council (WSC) in the 1990s. The company set a goal to reduce emissions 10 percent below 1995 levels by 2010. Intel has had a commitment to reduce PFCs since 1996 and has been tracking emissions of those compounds since 1995. At that time, PFCs represented more than half of Intel’s total climate impact. In the years immediately after the agreement, emissions continued to increase as the company grew, but by 2006, PFCs had dropped back down to 1995 levels despite manufacturing increases of more than 4 times over that period. This represented a reduction of approximately 900,000 metric tons of CO2 from the peak emissions in 2002. Intel began tracking GHG emissions from energy in 2000, and in 2003, established a company-wide goal to reduce energy consumption 4 percent per year normalized to production. The energy conservation projects Intel has implemented were estimated to have reduced its 2005 energy bill by $15 million.
Approach to GHG Management Intel’s approach to reducing PFCs has primarily focused on design for environment principles. Semiconductor manufacturing processes are updated roughly every two years, requiring the redesign of many process steps. During this design phase, Intel has consciously chosen to select chemicals with reduced or zero global warming potential (GWP) and has optimized processes to consume PFCs during the process as fully as possible, thereby minimizing emissions. This approach has been preferred over end-of-pipe treatment of PFCs, though the company has utilized that in limited applications. Energy reduction project ideas are developed at each of the manufacturing sites and then shared with a cross-site team. That team then decides how to best allocate the available conservation project money to get the best return. Suppliers play an important role in the conservation efforts because a substantial portion of the energy use at a manufacturing site is due to the process tools used for making silicon wafers. Intel has worked with SEMATECH and other semiconductor companies to develop standards for improving energy efficiency in these tools. Intel intends to continue these approaches and believes this will drive the company to meeting or exceeding its Climate Leaders goal.
Progress Towards Goal Completion As of 2006, Intel has reduced its normalized GHG emissions 20 percent from its 2004 baseline. Intel intends to continue funding energy conservation projects as a distinct activity and using design for environment principles to minimize PFC emissions from its factory operations.

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