Energy-saving computers
Where Asus is using motherboard design to save energy, Delta Electronics, a maker of power supplies, is utilizing improvements in conversion efficiency to make 200 million computers and servers more energy efficient.
A computer's power supply converts the 110-volt AC power from the power company into stable DC voltages (e.g. 12V, 5V, and 3.3V) that the computer can use. This process wastes power and generates heat. Increasing the conversion efficiency not only reduces the amount of power lost in conversion, but also reduces the amount of heat generated, and thus the amount of energy expended on cooling.
Delta, which became the world's largest producer of power supplies in 2002, manufactures power supplies for more than half of the world's laptops and servers, and about one-quarter of its desktop computers.
"We make roughly 17 million power supplies per month," says Mark Ko, president and COO of Delta. "That means that if we increase our devices' conversion efficiency by just 1%, the world needs to build one fewer 600-megawatt power plant every year." The company has increased its conversion efficiency by 0.5-1% per year for the last five years.
Delta chairman Bruce Cheng has for years been fervently urging companies to pay more attention to the environment. He's also applied some of his own company's resources to the development of new energy. In 2004, Delta established DelSolar to develop and manufacture solar cells. More recently, the company has begun developing inverters for wind turbines and components for the power systems of electric cars.
Cheng's now thinking about designing a new "inheritable" TV. The case and most of the components of such a TV would be intended for long-term use, while the control board, consumables, and firmware would be updateable, allowing the TV's functionality to be continuously upgraded. The design epitomizes the "cradle to cradle" spirit, discouraging obsolescence and flipping mainstream market logic on its head. It has great potential to save energy... if consumers will accept it.
(3) Mobilizing the supply chain
When calculating product lifecycle footprints, manufacturers must not only take the end-use of products into account, but must also look at carbon emissions associated with the raw materials. The process can represent a huge headache for corporations because 1) huge numbers of parts and raw materials go into products and 2) every supplier, from the very large to the very small, has things that it has difficulty accounting for.
"For us, the toughest link in the chain is reducing the carbon emissions of the materials phase," says AUO's Wells Lin. He explains that the materials that go into liquid-crystal panels include glass, plastic, metal frames, liquid crystals, LEDs, and cold-cathode fluorescent lamps. Getting in touch with more than 500 suppliers large and small, getting those suppliers to provide carbon-footprint data, then getting them to reduce their carbon emissions is a herculean task.
He says that some of the big-name suppliers that dominate key parts and materials markets are oligopolists that won't even provide carbon-footprint data. Glass substrate manufacturers, for example, are extremely reluctant to publish carbon data because fuel and power comprise such a large proportion of their costs that providing carbon data would be equivalent to revealing their entire cost structure. Some large Japanese firms that supply chemical products (e.g. photoresists) face similar difficulties.
Recognizing the existence of this kind of bottleneck, international guidelines on the assessment of lifecycle GHG emissions permit companies to utilize data from similar firms in lieu of actual data (e.g. the carbon numbers for glass from another nation or firm). But the specification prohibits such "second-tier numbers" from accounting for more than 10% of a product's lifecycle carbon emissions.
Unlike the more obstructionist of the major materials firms, most small and medium-sized suppliers of electronics components face intense competition. As a result, they are more responsive to pressure from their customers. But firms often have more than 1,000 suppliers. How can they get their entire supply chains on board with their energy conservation efforts?
"We ask all our suppliers to set up a contact window," says Asus' Frank Lin. He says that Asus' order system contains links to webpages with technical specifications. Whenever suppliers go online to check for a new order from Asus, they are compelled to view the newest energy-conservation specifications. Suppliers have to adhere to these specifications when delivering goods, and can't claim "you didn't notify us!"
(4) Intelligent distribution
Companies aren't just analyzing their designs, materials, parts purchasing and production processes in search of energy savings, they're also examining post-production processes such as packaging and transportation.
It turns out that one of the keys to reducing carbon emissions from the transport of goods is intelligent packaging.
Low-carbon packaging
"We decreased the weight of the packaging for a 15" laptop computer from 890 grams to 620 grams," says Asus' Lin. By lightening and improving packaging (e.g. by strengthening the inner box and eliminating the exterior packaging), Asus was able to increase the number of laptops per air-freight pallet from 54 to 78, and per sea-freight pallet from 90 to 130. By cramming an extra 840 laptops into every shipping container, the company improved its shipping efficiency by 45%, reducing the carbon footprint of its laptops and greatly reducing its transportation costs.
Shortening and merging transportation routes can also reduce carbon footprints. It is particularly important that companies take action on products for which transportation constitutes a significant proportion of carbon emissions.
For example, while the production of agricultural products involves relatively simple processes, such goods are often sold to buyers on the other side of the planet or shipped thousands of miles for processing. This increases the carbon footprint of agricultural products, and, in the future, may reduce their sales.
(5) Recycling
Can raw materials and products be recycled? How many times can recycled materials be reused? How should the product be disposed of? The answers to these questions have a significant impact on a product's carbon footprint. Full recyclability can reduce a product's carbon footprint score, helping offset carbon emissions generated by its production or use.
"We can't recycle and reuse without ensuring that downstream recycling plants can achieve economies of scale," says TSMC's Hsu. "You have to establish sufficient incentives to keep these plants viable in the long term." Hsu says that in keeping with the concept of environmental friendliness, TSMC stresses cooperation, not competition. In fact, the company's cooperation with new recycling facilities over the last few years is a case in point.
Hsu mentions the recycling of antistatic plastic bags: TSMC uses as much as 5 tons of antistatic plastic bags every month as packaging for IC wafers. These bags contain aluminum foil and used not to be recyclable. But Taiwanese industry consumed such a huge number of them (the semiconductor and optoelectronics industries alone use nearly 100 tons per month) that they became a problem for Taiwan's landfills. That fact, together with the global semiconductor industry's move to switch metrics from "recycling percentage" to "final landfill volume," prompted TSMC to help recyclers develop the technology to deal with the bags.
With TSMC's support, recyclers need only invest NT$2 million to be able to separate the aluminum from the plastic. Once the materials are separated, the aluminum is cast into ingots and reused, while the plastic is turned into foam sandals and similar products. TSMC went on to share the technology with its industry association and with each of Taiwan's technology parks to encourage other firms to recycle their plastic bags.
"If you want to reduce carbon emissions, you need more than one firm working at it. To do it effectively, you need the entire business community, the entire nation involved," argues Hsu.
Risk vs. opportunity
The tech industry is one of the pillars of the Taiwanese economy, and we should applaud its efforts to green itself to greater competitiveness. However, given that at present more than half of Taiwan's 15 carbon footprint certifications are clustered in this sector and that few of our traditional manufacturers and only one of our financial firms has responded to the CDP questionnaire, it is clear that Taiwan's business community as a whole is not yet paying sufficient attention to the carbon issue. This suggests a worrying lack of awareness of risk management.
"Taiwan has yet to institute a carbon tax, and our GHG reduction act has languished in the legislature for more than three years," says Allen H. Hu, director of the Institute of Environmental Engineering and Management at National Taipei University of Technology. "As such, it is impossible for us to control our total emissions of carbon in the way Europe does." Without the carrot and the stick, the business community has little incentive to stop dawdling.
Hu argues that once overall limits are in place, carbon quotas for industry will urgently need to be elaborated. These quotas plus a tax on carbon will create a market mechanism for pricing carbon (through the trade in carbon credits). This, in turn, will create an incentive for all industries and sectors of the economy to cut their carbon emissions and sell their excess carbon credits for cash.
Hu cites the EU as an example. When the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997, signatory nations established carbon reduction targets for 2012. When the UK and Germany achieved their targets in 2005, they forged ahead, setting new, more stringent targets. Spurred on by government policy, companies developed new technologies and alternative energy sources that nations outside the EU are having difficulty matching.
With the low-carbon economy virtually on our doorsteps and the tech industry already greening, are the government and our other industries ready to address the carbon risks and carbon opportunities of a warming world? Are they ready to again shoot for the stars, for themselves and for Taiwan? There is clearly plenty of scope for greater efforts.