April 25, 2025 By John Compani Senior Member of the Technical Staff for Corporate EHS and Sustainability, GlobalFoundries Every year, GlobalFoundries (GF) experts develop and implement new projects to enhance the sustainable operations of the company’s advanced manufacturing sites across the globe. With a mix of innovation, clever engineering and incremental improvements, the teams enable important resource savings to further decrease GF’s impact on the environment and deliver on our sustainability commitments to our customers. There is no better time to share these accomplishments than in the midst of GF’s third annual Earth Week, which has the theme of “ONEGF, one planet, protect it together”. GF recognizes climate change is an unprecedented global challenge, and below are some of the ways we are taking meaningful action. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions This week GF announced an accelerated and more ambitious goal for reducing our total greenhouse gas emissions by 42% from 2021-2030, even as the company continues to expand its global semiconductor manufacturing capacity and capabilities. Read about this exciting news here. GF is on track to meet this more ambitious 42% reduction goal, which will be accomplished through a comprehensive mix of energy efficiency improvements, state-of-the-art emissions controls, expanded use of alternative chemistries, and use of lower-carbon power across all our fabs. In 2024, GF completed projects at our fabs with reoccurring benefits of approximately 100,000 MTCO2e, which is equivalent to the amount of carbon sequestered by 30,000 acres of mature forest in one year. Saving water Semiconductor manufacturing requires large amounts of water. Despite our fabs not being located in high water stress geographies, GF takes water conservation seriously and we continue to drive new ways of reducing, recycling and reusing water at our facilities. More than 42% of GF’s total water use in 2024 was covered by reused or recycled water. In 2024 alone, our completed water conservation projects led to an annual savings of more than 224,000 m³ (59 million gallons) of water – about the amount used by 540 average U.S. households in one year. These new water-saving projects were related to identifying and seizing opportunities to reuse and recycle at various points throughout our chip manufacturing processes. Using less electricity Semiconductor manufacturing is an energy-intensive process. Not only do electricity conservation projects save money, but they can also reduce the GHG emissions generated as a byproduct of producing that electricity. In 2024, GF’s sustainability and efficiency initiatives resulted in annual savings of 33 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity – enough to power over 3,000 average U.S. households. These efforts led to both significant energy cost savings for GF as well as lower indirect GHG emissions. These savings were achieved through numerous projects across our global fabs, including efficiency improvements to our chilled water systems and HVAC optimization Managing chemicals and waste Across all of our manufacturing sites, GF has rigorous chemical review and pollution prevention programs in place to identify opportunities to reduce or eliminate chemical use and waste generation. For 2024, teams completed a variety of projects for a combined reduction of nearly 900 metric tons of hazardous waste and chemical use, equating to about $8 million in annual savings for our company. These projects include innovative new processes and systems, new efficiencies, and novel ways of reusing or recycling materials in our lithography, cleans, and other manufacturing tools. Keep an eye out for even more details on the above as well as many other resource conservation projects in GF’s forthcoming 2025 Sustainability Report, to be published in June. John Compani is a Senior Member of Technical Staff with GF’s Corporate EHS & Sustainability Team. He is based in Malta, New York, with focus on GF’s Environmental Performance, Resource Conservation and Sustainability efforts.
