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| Fig. 1: Cleanroom environmental-system intensity metrics used to bound facility electricity demand in semiconductor manufacturing (airflow efficiency and power density ranges). [4,5] (Image source: L. Skarada.) |
In this note we shall concern ourselves with two numbers: (1) total electricity implicated by semiconductor wafer production and fabrication for 2024 global wafer shipments, and (2) electricity per unit silicon area shipped. Global silicon wafer shipments in 2024 totaled 12,478 million square inches (MSI), corresponding to 8.05 km2 of shipped silicon area. [1] Wafer Works also reports 12.2 billion wafers shipped; the MSI metric is used here because it directly measures silicon area independent of wafer size mix. Using per-area electricity intensities from life-cycle analysis (1.84 kWh/cm2 for wafer production plus fabrication), this throughput implies approximately 148 TWh of manufacturing electricity, or 18.4 MWh per square meter of silicon shipped. [2] This electricity represents roughly 0.5% of 2022 world electricity generation (Fig. 2) 2024 world generation data are not yet available. [3] Fig. 1 summarizes cleanroom performance ranges that explain why facility electricity can vary by an order of magnitude even at similar throughput: airflow efficiency spans roughly 103–104 cfm/kW across facilities. [4,5]
The calculation uses three fixed inputs. First, Wafer Works 2024 Annual Report reproduces a SEMI industry statistic for global silicon wafer shipments: 12,478 MSI in 2024. [1] Second, Williams et al. report electricity intensities of 0.34 kWh/cm2 for wafer production and 1.5 kWh/cm2 for wafer fabrication, totaling 1.84 kWh/cm2. [2] Third, the UN Energy Statistics Pocketbook provides world electricity generation totals used here only as a context denominator (Fig. 2). [3]
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| Fig. 2: World electricity generation (TWh) used as the global context denominator for interpreting semiconductor manufacturing electricity at scale. [3] (Image source: L. Skarada.} |
Converting shipped area to square meters:
| Awafer = 12,478 MSI × 106 in2/MSI × 6.4516 × 10-4 m2/in2 |
| Awafer = 8.05 × 106 m2 |
Converting electricity intensity to MWh/m2:
| I = 1.84 kWh/cm2 × 104 cm2/m2 × 10−3 MWh/kWh |
| I = 18.4 MWh/m2 |
Total electricity is the product:
| Etotal | = | I × Awafer = 18.4 MWh/m2 × 8.05 × 106 m2 |
| = | 1.4 × 108 MWh |
or 148 TWh. Table 1 summarizes the computed electricity metrics for 2024 global wafer shipments.
This 148 TWh estimate assumes the Williams et al. intensity (1.84 kWh/cm2) applies uniformly across all facilities globally. [2] In practice, cleanroom efficiency variation (Fig. 1) implies substantial uncertainty: facilities at the lower efficiency bound (103 cfm/kW) consume more fan power per unit airflow and would increase total electricity; facilities at higher efficiency (104 cfm/kW) would reduce it. [4,5]
Additionally, the Williams et al. data are from 2002; process node scaling and equipment efficiency changes since then could shift the per-area intensity. The 148 TWh figure should therefore be interpreted as an order-of-magnitude estimate bounded by documented throughput and published intensity metrics, not as a comprehensive industry census.
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| Table 1: Computed electricity metrics for 2024 global semiconductor wafer shipments. [1-3] |
The computed 148 TWh represents wafer production and fabrication only, using a single per-area intensity from life-cycle literature; it does not include packaging, test, facility overhead variations, or regional differences in fab efficiency. [2] Cleanroom environmental systems are a major component of facility electricity and exhibit wide performance variation: benchmarks show airflow efficiency ranging from roughly 103 to 104 cfm/kW (Fig. 1), and power densities can exceed typical office buildings by factors of 10–100. [4-6]
Corporate reporting provides a partial reality check on these magnitudes. Intel, for example, treats energy and electricity explicitly as tracked operational quantities in both its corporate responsibility reporting and its annual financial filings, with multi-TWh annual energy use and electricity identified as material to manufacturing operations and risk disclosure. [7,8] These documents do not reveal facility-level intensities, but they are consistent with the view that semiconductor manufacturing energy use is large enough to be monitored and managed at the corporate scale even when precise fab- by-fab data remain proprietary.
This variation implies that two facilities producing similar wafer volumes could differ substantially in electricity demand depending on HVAC design, recirculation efficiency, and control strategy, making system design choices at least as important as throughput scaling in determining total industry electricity. [4,5]
Global silicon wafer shipments in 2024 totaled 12,478 MSI, corresponding to 8.05 km2 of shipped silicon area. [1] Using electricity intensities of 1.84 kWh/cm2 for wafer production plus fabrication, this throughput implies approximately 148 TWh of manufacturing electricity, or 18.4 MWh per square meter of silicon shipped. [2] This represents roughly 0.5% of 2022 world electricity generation. [3] Cleanroom performance variation (Fig. 1) indicates that facility-level efficiency improvements could materially reduce industry electricity demand even at constant throughput. [4,5]
© Lance Skarada. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "Annual Report 2024," Wafer Works Corporation, April 2025.
[2] E. D. Williams, R. U. Ayres and M. Heller, "The 1.7 Kilogram Microchip: Energy and Material Use in the Production of Semiconductor Devices," Environ. Sci. Technol. 36, 5504 (2002).
[3] "Energy Statistics Pocketbook 2025," United Nations, 2025.
[4] J. Z. Lian et al., "Quantifying the Present and Future Environmental Sustainability of Cleanrooms," Cell Rep. Sustain. 1, 100219 (2024).
[5] T. Xu and W. Tschudi, "Energy Performance of Cleanroom Environmental Systems," Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL-49106, November 2001.
[6] W. Tschudi and T. Xu, "Cleanroom Energy Benchmarking Results," Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL-50219, September 2001.
[7] "Corporate Responsibility Report 2024-25," Intel Corporation, 2025.
[8] "Annual Report," Intel Corporation, December 2024.