TSMC’s growing energy requirements could place significant pressure on both the company and Taiwan during the latter part of the decade.
According to a new report from S&P Global, the company’s electricity consumption currently accounts for eight percent of Taiwan’s overall usage, a figure which could rise to almost 24 percent by 2030 as TSMC continues to manufacture increasingly advanced semiconductors.
Data also shows that between 2016 when TSMC started producing 10nm chips and 2023, when mass production of its 3nm chips began, the company’s electricity consumption more than doubled from ~110GW to around 250GW.
Other sustainability reports from S&P place TSMC’s electricity consumption at more than twice that of Intel’s 90GW and greater than SK Hynix’s 125GW.
Working on the assumption that wafer shipments will grow by 90 percent compared to 2023 levels, modeling from S&P shows that TSMC’s electricity would reach 794GW, with a 50 percent growth prediction still having consumption totaling 418GW by 2030.
Furthermore, this power crunch will only be exacerbated as the company adopts the energy-intensive extreme ultraviolet lithography processes. The report also shows that in 2022, TSMC’s power consumption per 12-inch wafer mask layer was 27.7kW, this figure has jumped to 40.5kW as 3nm production scaled up in 2023.
Although TSMC has a net zero by 2050 policy in place and has taken steps to try and reduce its emissions and move to 100 percent renewable energy by 2040, the company’s electricity consumption is by far its biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
For context, while the company is consuming around eight percent of Taiwan’s overall usage, the percentage of electricity currently being generated by renewable energy across Taiwan currently sits at around six percent.