Decarbonisation in action

Edwards is a leading provider of environmental abatement systems for the semiconductor industry, and supplies its products and solutions all over the world. Edwards is committed to minimising the negative environmental impacts of semiconductor manufacturing.

Semiconductors are an essential component in most areas of modern life, including 5G network infrastructure, cloud computing, gaming, medical devices, computer hardware and EVs. Being so essential to these sectors means that semiconductor manufacturing is a huge growth area - something that makes Edwards keen to ensure their energy use is sustainable long term, as part of their wider work to reduce their Scope 1-3 emissions. You can read more about emission categories here.

As a business, Edwards strives to reduce the power consumption of their manufacturing processes and their products, as well as making equipment more efficient to allow them to produce more chips with less equipment.

The manufacturing process of semiconductors uses high global warming potential gases, many of which are very stable and are difficult to destroy. Edwards has pioneered technologies for the abatement of greenhouse gases for over 25 years; annually, Edwards products are reducing emissions of CO2e by the semiconductor industry by over 19 million tonnes. But the business knows that they can do more.

Edwards is tackling their emissions by adopting a ‘Remove, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ approach. They also recognise the power of ‘Sustainability through Collaboration’ so are working with suppliers, partners and third parties to collectively tackle their emissions and drive forward industry improvements, for the benefit of themselves and their customers.

Changes at Edwards’ Clevedon abatement manufacturing plant include making the facility a 100% renewable electricity site by switching to solar power via a PPA contract and using air source heat pumps for heating and cooling. Other measures at the Clevedon factory include capturing rainwater to reuse as grey water, implementing an EV salary sacrifice scheme and charging points, using high efficiency LEDS, reducing business travel and mandating their default shipping mode to be via sea (instead of air).

The results include:

• 40% saving from heat pumps - 18 tonnes of CO2e

• 16% generation of energy used - 85 tonnes of CO2e

• This in turn saves Edwards’ customers 19 million tonnes of CO2e (the equivalent of 60% of the South West’s CO2 emissions)

Neil Mehta explains; “From an operational perspective, energy is now seen by many businesses as a risk: something that needs to be mitigated, to reduce costs, to ensure operational resilience and to reduce carbon. Moving away from fossil fuels has never been so important, from both a business and regional resilience perspective. If we now think about energy as a key driver for success in a business, reducing our consumption has to be a priority; not just from a cost perspective but also the benefit from a carbon perspective.”