How to combine sustainability and engineering for business growth

Integrating the sustainability dimension early in product development enables more comprehensive planning, reduces costs from late-stage revisions, ensures compliance with evolving regulations, and reduces material and energy costs. Since electronic components contribute significantly to a product’s carbon footprint during production, this article explores the influence of sustainability in engineering, particularly in electronics engineering, and its effect on product success.

Two-step approach to market success

Whether it is a product or manufacturing requirement, incorporating sustainability considerations in the electronics design process can seem overwhelming. It may feel like an added cost and would make supply chain management more complex. However, our experience shows just the opposite is true, with cost reductions and efficiency gains resulting from implementing sustainability measures. This is shown in our previous blog article on sustainable engineering. Incorporating sustainability into product design not only increases a company's environmentally-friendly reputation but also creates new avenues for market differentiation and can unlock substantial power savings for the end user.

An initial two-phase eco-design study will help identify and address the environmental hotspots of the product. In the first phase, current-state sustainability analysis is performed to understand the environmental hotspots. This can include a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tailored to electronic components, or circularity assessments. In the second phase, measures for impact reduction are explored, as well as potential solutions, which might be applicable for a wider range of products. Successful implementation of such eco-design studies relies on a well-rounded team that combines environmental insights with technical expertise.

This ensures both the discovery of sustainable opportunities and their practical execution. For an in-depth look at how these principles are applied in practice, explore our project with Bystronic to see how these principles are applied in practice. In collaboration with Zühlke, Bystronic not only established a clear roadmap for reducing CO2 emissions but also laid the foundation for new generations of laser cutting and bending systems. Using resources efficiently, embracing circularity strategies, and aligning with genuine client needs resulted not only in a potential carbon emission reduction of up to 50% but also decreased operational costs.

For example: Microchips are the main contributor

An Apple iPhone and a high-tech medical device share a surprising commonality: the largest carbon footprint of both comes from the microchip manufacturing process. This highlights a key area for sustainability in engineering.

Semiconductors are essential to modern electronics. Mobile phones, electric vehicles, imaging technologies like MRI, and solar panels rely on them. However, their production comes at a steep environmental cost. Figure 1 highlights a jarring fact: semiconductors account for 39% of Apple’s manufacturing carbon footprint, which in turn makes up 77% of the company’s total carbon footprint. This is due to the immense energy needed in semiconductor manufacturing. In fact, this process is one of the most energy-intensive processes in the world, involving material deposition, circuit etching, and maintaining cleanroom environments.

Component characteristics: Microchips are the main emissions driver

It is possible to leverage carbon footprint data in electronics design and component selection. With a preliminary sustainability assessment in the early phases of product design, carbon footprint data can serve as the foundation for sustainable component selection. 

Integrated circuits (ICs) are a major focus for lowering carbon emissions because the silicon in them is very energy-intensive to produce. Silicon contributes 60-80% of a microchip's carbon footprint, despite only making up 2-3% of the chip's weight. Therefore, the total silicon content becomes one of the key parameters in component selection. The biggest single contributor to a microchip's carbon footprint is the silicon die production. The type of microchip package is also a factor in a chip’s carbon footprint. Some packages have a higher environmental impact due to gold wire bonds, while others use tin solder balls, which are less carbon intensive. Even in small amounts, like in wire bonds, gold has a huge carbon footprint – 100 times more than making an average integrated circuit (IC) and 10,000 times more than copper. 

Supplier selection: Reducing carbon footprint and improving cost efficiency

It’s useful to examine where the high carbon impact of semiconductor manufacturing started. The supply chain of an average microchip can be divided into two main phases: wafer fabrication and microchip assembly and testing. Both processes are extremely energy-intensive and ought to be carried out in well-controlled environments.

The earliest possible carbon footprint levers in microchip selection come from the first phase, silicon wafer production. The wafer disc acts as the substrate material on which the microcircuits are etched and deposited. The size of the wafer determines how many chips can be fabricated on one unit and impacts efficiency, costs and ultimately production energy. The 300mm diameter wafers will accommodate roughly twice as many chips per wafer compared to 200mm wafers, which compensates for the slightly higher energy requirements. Therefore, favoring microchips fabricated on 300mm wafers over 200mm wafers is a step towards reducing carbon footprint and improving cost efficiency. As in many other cases, also here the carbon footprint follows the cost trend.

The comparison of components such as ICs requires identifying the relative die area impact, relative gold content impact, relative wafer size impact and location of fab. Leveraging product development lifecycle tools will enable the evaluation of these upstream emission factors and thereby compare components with similar functions. For example, SiliconExpert is an excellent tool to extract fab qualification documents of chips to introduce sustainability considerations in component selection.

Finally, manufacturing location is a key parameter in supplier selection regarding the manufacturing carbon footprint. Observing electricity carbon intensity maps helps differentiate between supplier regions based on the carbon intensity of the region's average electricity profile. Components manufactured, even partially, in a location with a high percentage low carbon electricity, like renewable or nuclear energy, should be preferred. In addition, the air conditioning systems in microchip cleanroom assembly and testing can amount for approximately third of total energy consumption. A colder climate would require less energy for A/C, affecting total carbon footprint.

Incorporating sustainability principles in electronics design extends far beyond integrated circuits. The entire lifecycle of a product, from the manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCBs) to the selection of components such as diodes, transistors, large capacitors, and connectors, significantly contributes to the overall environmental impact. Most often the impact is tied to component weight or density of the functional parts. For example, the resolution of LED displays is directly linked to their carbon footprint. Moreover, the complexity of manufacturing processes and the energy sources used by suppliers are critical factors in determining the carbon footprint of electronic products. Opting for suppliers which utilise renewable energy sources can substantially reduce the carbon footprint of the final product.

Sustainability in engineering and electronics is not about higher costs; it actually leads to reduced expenses and increased efficiency due to optimised processes, resource use and innovative design practices. Therefore, sustainability future-proofs your products and services, driving innovation and success throughout the entire organisation.