Power hungry in Silicon Valley SFBG News | Power hungry in Silicon Valley | June 21, 2000 High-tech firms complain about electricity – but they're creating the problem By A. Clay Thompson Oracle Corporation, the Silicon Valley software giant, hosted an unusual roundtable meeting at its signature blue-glass headquarters June 9. Executives from a number of the world's biggest high-tech corporations showed up. So did Assemblymember Roderick Wright (D-Los Angeles) and state senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach). The cause for all this high-level, face-to-face communication? No, it wasn't a Microsoft verdict after-party. Silicon Valley's tech corporations are worried about electricity. The valley is starting to experience power blackouts, and electricity outages mean assembly-line shutdowns and lost revenue. The first blackout of the summer struck during the heat wave June 14, knocking out Apple Computer and a few smaller outfits. "These companies need reliable power, and yesterday they didn't get it," Michelle Montague-Bruno of the Silicon Valley Manufacturers Group, an industry lobby, told us June 15. At the summit and in the press, tech leaders complained about the inadequacies of the power grid. They complained that the Bay Area hasn't built any new electricity plants in years. But while the digerati were busy complaining, they failed to mention one thing: The computer industry sucks up an outrageous amount of juice. And although critics say the industry could cut demand significantly through improved conservation, in two major industry sectors the amount of energy used per facility is increasing instead. While software makers like Oracle draw some power – just think about hundreds of geeks running their computers day and night – that's a relatively minor drain on the state's electricity supplies. The biggest energy users in the tech world are the memory-chip and computer-component manufacturers, companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, LSI Logic, and Advanced Micro Devices, all of whom turned out for the summit. Unfortunately, they weren't talking about conservation – and environmentalists say that's a big problem. "We hope this is a wake-up call," said Karl Rabago, managing director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado-based think tank that has studied the issue. "The first thing they should do is look at efficiency. We know there are efficiency gains that can be made in manufacturing facilities." The industry, Rabago argued, "needs to take ownership of the energy issue. A lot of these guys act like their energy consumption just doesn't matter. That's dumb." Move over, Detroit Tech manufacturers – companies crafting circuit boards, memory chips, disk drives, computers, and computer terminals – burn through nearly 16 million kilowatt-hours' worth of electricity annually, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Unless you're an engineer or an economist, that figure probably means nothing to you, so let's give it some context: It takes 9.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to put together all the light trucks, SUVs, vans, and cars that roll off the assembly line in the United States every year. The nation's lumber mills use a total of 7.2 million kilowatt-hours annually. It takes 5.2 million kilowatt-hours to process all the chickens and turkeys eaten in America every year. The biggest power hogs in the tech world are companies that make computer memory chips, or semiconductors – the brains of every computer. Those companies suck up 11.3 million kilowatt-hours annually, Department of Commerce figures show. Builders of circuit boards – the fiberglass-and-copper nervous system of each digital device – are the second-biggest energy users. Industry leaders insist they're trying to control their demand for power. "We're doing everything we can to conserve electricity," said John Greenagle of Advanced Micro Devices, a Santa Clara-based chip maker. "Yesterday we had half the lights in the building turned down." But in fact, chip companies like Advanced Micro Devices are blazing through more and more power per plant every year. According to commerce data, the amount of electricity used by the average semiconductor factory surged upward by about 20 percent between 1992 and 1997. Energy usage for the average circuit-board plant went up by 6 percent during the same time period. Industry spokespeople say manufacturers are simply cranking out more product – which takes more electricity. "Total energy consumption has gone up," Greenagle told us, "but energy consumption per chip has gone down." But more than 50 percent of the power used by the semiconductor industry goes to waste, according to a Feb. 2000 report by the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center. The report lays out a half-dozen juice-saving techniques and says that chip companies should implement them when they retrofit old factories – a frequent activity in the ever-changing digital workplace – or when they build new plants. Tech companies "need to look at getting more work out of existing energy," argues Jim DePeso, communications director for the center. Liquid needs Memory chips are made by etching circuit patterns onto eight-inch-wide hunks of silicon known as wafers. Each wafer will eventually be cut into hundreds of chips – an eight-incher, for example, can hold 200 Pentium IIs. Potent solvents and acids are used to chemically cut transistors into the chunks of solidified sand. Thousands of gallons of chilled, ultrapure water go into rinsing off the chemicals. Keeping that water cold is a major electricity drain. Much of the work is done in supersterile rooms to prevent even microscopic contaminants from tainting the chips. To get a room that clean, you've got to constantly circulate the air in it through heavy filters – call it air-conditioning on steroids – another very energy-intensive process. The industry's voracious appetite for water is an enviro problem in itself: washing a single eight-inch silicon slab demands some 2,000 gallons of water, according to a 1999 report by the Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center. "We live in a land of draughts. The next time we have one, there's going to be a lot of hand-wringing," said Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a group pushing techies to adopt more eco-friendly practices. The business's thirst, he says, "means we're going to get into more and more water wars." Greens are worried about the growing global scarcity of fresh water. The creation of circuit boards demands smaller but still sizable quantities of water as well. On average, 51.2 gallons of water go into making one square foot of circuit board, according to a 1997 report by the Environmental Protection Agency's Design for the Environment program. In Silicon Valley the industry's liquid needs translate into millions of gallons daily. Judging by San Jose sewage plant records, 44 of the area's top 57 water users are electronics firms. Combined, the big-time tech plants guzzled more than 8.5 million gallons a day in 1998 (the most recent year for which records are available). Last year tech companies in the city of Santa Clara – home to behemoths like Applied Materials, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel – sucked up about 20 percent of the town's water. Some experts say the industry is improving its practices. The tech firms "are practicing much more up-to-date techniques and doing a lot more [water] recycling," said Dennis Ma, assistant director of Santa Clara's Water and Sewer Utility. "Some are very aggressive in using the leading-edge technologies. They are aware that it not only costs them to buy the water, it costs them more to discharge it to the sewer. By and large, most high-tech companies try pretty hard to look at internal consumption and processes." But Smith thinks the corporations can do more: "We've been trying for the last several years to work with the companies. The technology exists for them to close the loop [and rely almost exclusively on recycled water]." With labor and land costs high in the valley, electronics manufacturers are increasingly moving their operations to regions where the hourly wage is low and land is cheap. Unfortunately for the environment, many of those low-overhead spots are in relatively rainfall-free areas such as Austin, Texas, Albuquerque, N.M., and the Arizona lowlands. In those arid states, intense water consumption by the techies is further depleting already waning groundwater supplies. "The entire Southwest is a desert," Smith notes. "There simply is no extra water there." The makers of e-goods could confront their twin bogeys – addictions to water and power – and come up with industrywide conservation standards. Or the federal government could set rules. Instead, things are headed in the other direction. The digerati are buying backup generators. They're calling for new, filth-belching power plants. And insiders say some corporations may leave the region if they aren't guaranteed an endless supply of electricity and water. Alex Braun, an editor at Semiconductor International, a major trade magazine, typifies the industry attitude. "You've got yourself a staggering problem unless California starts forking out the facilities needed," he told us. "Not just power but water, and everything else." [http://www.sfbg.com/searchit.html]