How to meet the need to calculate suppliers’ GHG emissions

Business news | January 25, 2024

By Peter Clarke

semiconductor Greenhouse Gas

The Semiconductor Climate Consortium (SCC) has published guidance on how to calculate Scope 3 Category 1 greenhouse gas emissions.

The ‘Scope 3 Category 1’ includes all purchased goods and services across the upstream supply chain, from raw material onward and it is the alignment of this reporting that the SCC is trying to address in this 70-page document. The SCC is a group of companies that have come together since November 2022 under the auspices of the industry organization SEMI

Companies generally, including those in the semiconductor industry, are being required to move towards the monitoring and reporting of the sustainability of their processes. This includes measurements and estimates of carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions.

Not only will companies need to report the emissions of GHG caused directly (Scope 1) by internal activities but they will also need to calculate and report indirect emissions by suppliers of key services such as electricity. However, companies are also expected to estimate the GHG emissions of ALL indirect emissions that occur in the value chain both upstream and downstream. This is Scope 3.

The guidelines, developed for the SCC by management consultancy Arthur D Little, are available for download and build on existing accounting frameworks to provide sector-specific support, and guidance. Category 1 is just one of many Scope 3 categories.

The guidelines cover accounting methodologies, boundaries and quantification and calculation methods as well as how to select data material to the calculations but are open to being refined on the basis of user feedback.

Case study

The guidelines include a case study conducted with Screen Semiconductor Solutions Co. Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan) a maker of wafer cleaning systems. Key challenges identified by Screen included accounting for the large number of parts per tool, obtaining primary data for the many parts and chemical solutions, and conducting life cycle calculations equipment models where shipments are only a few units per year.

“We recognize that this version is a starting point. We look forward to gathering feedback and making improvements as companies begin to apply these practices in their own calculations,” said Elena Kocherovsky, senior climate program manager at Applied Materials Inc. and co-leader of the SCC Scope 3 emissions working group, in a statement.

“While companies are implementing the new Scope 3 Category 1 guidelines, our working group will be starting on the next steps to develop guidance for calculating and reporting Scope 3 Category 11 (Use of Sold Products),” said Natasha Hodas, a program manager with the supply chain responsibility environmental team at Intel and co-leader of the SCC Scope 3 emissions working group.