22 ms·

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with

• jmartrican 5y ago
  From what I understand they will try to recycle the water. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-water-dependent-chip-plants-in-arizona.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-...
• bserge 5y ago
  Can they create a water pipeline from elsewhere? Crazy, but not that far out. Oil and gas is transported this way.
  • solarhoma 5y ago
    Society pays significantly more for a gallon of oil than water. Water can cost less than a cent in some municipalities. Building a pipeline would increase that cost 100x easily
  • tyleo 5y ago
    Anecdotal but I have a friend who is an engineer in water treatment and he said pipelines aren’t a silver bullet for two reasons: 1. They are leaky so you end up paying more for the same amount of water 2. Wherever you are buying the water from (the source of the pipeline) knows their water is valuable and can charge more
    • gitfan86 5y ago
      Also future weather patterns are hard to predict. What if 20 years from now a place who needs water today is getting a ton of rain?
      • uptown 5y ago
        Reverse the flow?
        • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
          Yup, should require only a few adjustments. Over here (NL) they're looking into repurposing the existing natural gas network to transport hydrogen instead. I mean we're years away from removing the use of natural gas entirely, but the idea is there.
          • m4rtink 5y ago
            Given how small hydrogen atoms are, causing all kinds of leaks even in purpose built equipment & that hydrogen fires are invisible in sunlight I'm skeptical.
        • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
          Assuming your pipeline or canal is gravity driven, that could be hard.
          • lazide 5y ago
            It may also be economically unviable. Phoenix is around 1000 ft AGL, and much of the rest of Arizona that is populated is higher (Tucson 2300, Prescott ~5k, and Flagstaff almost 7k ft above sea level). Someone above was quoting CCF/HCF (Centrum Cubic Feet, or 100ft^3 of water or 748 gallons), which is a customary way to measure water volume in many utilities, and noting ~ $6.89 per CCF I believe. I did some random googling and ran across [https://www.tucsonaz.gov/water/residential-rates-and-monthly-charges https://www.tucsonaz.gov/water/residential-rates-and-monthly...], which shows a connection charge of ~ $12 Which shows that the average Tucson resident seems to be paying less then $5/ccf right now - discounting connection fee- with 'high use' (~ 60 CCF, the top bracket they list), around $10/ccf. 1 ccf being 748 gallons, and each gallon weighing 8.34 lbs means you're getting 6238 lbs of water for less than $5 if you're a typical Tucson resident, and for ~ $10 if you're a high use resident. Lifting water from ~ sea level to the 2300 ft AGL level takes energy (in a conservation of energy sense, regardless of efficiency). Specifically, approx 27,176 joules per gallon (yeah sorry) to lift in this case, or 20,327,648 joules per CCF, or in 'American' raw energy terms 5.65kwh. Properly sized electric motors are around 90 percent efficient, with the best possible about 97%. Large centrifugal pumps, properly sized, can hit up to 93%. Combined, that means in theory we could pump water uphill at, at best, 90% efficiency, and assuming no losses to friction in the pipes (which would be notable over the distances we're talking about, but is too complex to guesstimate here, but feel free to check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction_loss), So, if we pump in energy at 90% efficiency, we need 7.38 kwh of energy to get that water from sea level to Tucson - not counting cleaning or treating the water, infrastructure maintenance/piping, friction losses moving it over that distance, losses due to leaks, etc. Tucson has cheap electricity by California Standards (my typical price per kwh is ~ $.45, there are a lot of misleading numbers out there), and though I see .12/kwh, CA says .24 and that is blatantly false. Even so, if we use that number .12, it would add $1, literally if all we were doing was taking perfectly great water and just pumping it to Tucson, with no need for pipes, or any other infrastructure. That may not sound like much, but for a typical Tucson resident that would increase their bills by 20%. High users less as a percentage, but still over 10%. When you add in the major infrastructure building and maintenance costs (which probably swamp the energy costs), you're looking at 50% or more increase. If you add in acquisition of drinkable water from somewhere closer than Oregon (which bringing it up and over multiple mountain ranges is going to be fun), also even more of an increase.
  • pwarner 5y ago
    you use a lot more water than oil, maybe 100x? I think 100 gallons / person / day is not crazy for water, and I hope you don't use that much oil, maybe a gallon a day?
  • eCa 5y ago
    Not far out at all. The list of the world’s longest tunnels[1] is filled with water tunnels. Added: They are of course short whem compared to pipelines, but still. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_tunnels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_tunnels
• thehappypm 5y ago
  Arizona is famously good at water management. They require a 100 year plan and are basically completely non-dependent on the ever-shrinking Colorado River. If any state would have a plan for recycling and make sure this plan is done appropriately it’s AZ.
  • kirjav 5y ago
    I am not sure having a giant aqueduct diverting water from Colorado River counts as "completely non-dependent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project
  • ethanbond 5y ago
    … what? The US southwest is entering its first ever Tier 1 water shortage next year, meaning Arizona will have reduced supply equivalent to 1.2MM people’s annual consumption. No reason to believe we don’t go straight from here to Tier 2, onto Tier 3, and so on. Nature doesn’t provide enough water in a desert to be running sprawling metropolises and even more massive farms and graze land - especially water-intensive cotton farms. https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/drought-water-shortage-colorado-river/ https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/drought-water-shortage... > Already, water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two major reservoirs that store the Colorado River’s water, are down to 34% of their capacity and may soon drop too low to spin the hydroelectric turbines in their dams. Some smaller reservoirs began emergency releases in summer 2021 to prop up water levels in these lakes. https://westernresourceadvocates.org/projects/arizona-colorado-river-shortage/ https://westernresourceadvocates.org/projects/arizona-colora... > The Tier 1 shortage will reduce water to the Central Arizona Project by 320,000 acre-feet (enough water to supply 1.2 million individuals for a year). Maybe Arizona is losing this battle as gracefully as anyone could, but they are very much losing this battle.
    • 1123581321 5y ago
      I believe the user is saying that AZ planned ahead to end the necessity of using too much CAP water, which would mean that the Colorado River declaration won’t devastate their industry/ag. Reading some of the articles on its water authority website seems to bear this out, but certainly a lot depends on good management of their renewable sources and how strictly new construction like Intel’s is held to water reclamation standards (Intel is claiming to be a net positive contributor to the water supply.) https://new.azwater.gov/ https://new.azwater.gov/
• nabla9 5y ago
  You are not wrong, but having access to people with right experience and companies that supply the products and services for chip manufacture chips is more important. Seismic stability is another benefit. They have to spend more on recycling and cleaning the water than in other places. In 2020 Intel cleaned up and returned 95 percent of the freshwater it used in Arizona. They have their own water treatment plats and public-private partnerships for water purification that purify Intel’s wastewater back to drinking standard. https://download.intel.com/newsroom/2021/manufacturing/Intel-in-AZ-Sustainability-Fact-Sheet.pdf https://download.intel.com/newsroom/2021/manufacturing/Intel...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• cletus 5y ago
  The general perception of Arizona is that of a desert. But did you know that Arizona has ski resorts? The Rocky Mountains extend into Arizona and they get snow in the winter. >90% of Arizona's water comes from snow melt.
• baybal2 5y ago
  Microchips are a more strategic resource than water. I would not be surprised if even using tanker caravans to bring water from Utah is an option for chip production.
  • phreeza 5y ago
    Surely water is more strategically important than chips? It's just that chips are scarcer and thus easier to deny an enemy. If an enemy had the choice to deny one of the two resources, water would be the better strategic choice.
    • FredPret 5y ago
      No way, if water gets really scarce, the price will go up, and two things will happen: 1. many frivolous uses will go away - swimming pools, spray-and-pray agricultural irrigation 2. new sources will become viable - like desalination Ultimately we live on a planet replete with water, it's just uneconomical to purify most of it for use at current rates. The same is not true of microchips.
      • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
        Given that there's numerous cities and countries that are suffering from water shortages, you'd think that the price of water would go up already. But it hasn't, because there's interests at play to keep the price of water relatively low. Anyway you'd need different prices for different types of consumers, because it's a basic need for humans; you can't make water unaffordable for poorer people. I'm all for increasing the price of water and electricity for big consumers though, so that they will invest more R&D into reducing their consumption. Because when it's cheap, they'll just use more of it without thinking. That's also why coal power was (is?) a thing for so long.
        • lotsofpulp 5y ago
          > Given that there's numerous cities and countries that are suffering from water shortages, you'd think that the price of water would go up already. But it hasn't, because there's interests at play to keep the price of water relatively low. That just means the shortage is not sufficiently severe to cause prices to move. > Anyway you'd need different prices for different types of consumers, because it's a basic need for humans; you can't make water unaffordable for poorer people. The simpler way is to give poorer people money.
• buryat 5y ago
  I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta...) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 (https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/02/12/arizona-water-usage-state-uses-less-now-than-1957/2806899002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme...) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.conversion-website.com/volume/acre-foot-to-ton-water.html http://www.conversion-website.com/volume/acre-foot-to-ton-wa...) so a chip plant would be responsible for about 0.55% of overall water usage
  • lovemenot 5y ago
    Thanks for doing a fact-check. Might there be other other downstream states in USA or Mexico that would push that 0.55% ratio higher?
  • Buttons840 5y ago
    So one business / structure will use 1/200th of all water? That does sound like a lot.
    • bottled_poe 5y ago
      That’s one metric for impact. Perhaps you can think of some other metrics to compare it to before influencing the reader’s opinion?
    • baron_harkonnen 5y ago
      Not to mention that industry itself only accounts for 6% of Arizona's water usage [0] so we're talking about one single structure increasing the industrial usage by ~10%. [0]
      • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
        Industry is a surprisingly small portion of water consumption in many places. In many states, household water use (including lawns) can handily exceed the water used by industry. Using this water for domestic chip making is arguably a very reasonable use of water. If we’re going to start cutting water usage, let’s start with things like golf courses in the desert instead of critical chip-making infrastructure.
• HomeDeLaPot 5y ago
  Intel isn't stupid; they will want a return on their investment. I would love to see the internal whitepaper or whatever that summarized the decision.
  • wibagusto 5y ago
    It’s not about being stupid it’s about their self-interests versus all the folks who live in Arizona and depend on the water supply. Remember intel’s modus operandi is increasing profits for shareholders.
    • ryan93 5y ago
      Thank you for informing hacker news that companies want to make a profit. Now. Do you have some evidence that intel is harming people? The water is almost completely recycled
• ZetaZero 5y ago
  The "average" chip fab uses about as much water as 3 "average" irrigated center pivot farms. If the fab land was previously irrigated farm land, this will be a net savings of water. Math: 130 acres at 0.25 inches of water = 10 million gallons of water. Done once per week for 3 farms = 4.3m gallons per day. Average chip fab uses 2-4 million gallons per day
  • wibagusto 5y ago
    2-4 million gallons per day is a lot of water to piss away for some chips that go out of fashion in 5 years.
    • jhgb 5y ago
      Pretty much any facility capable of manufacturing semiconductor components has been very busy for the past few years -- Intel even had to resurrect 22nm chips at some time. Why do you assume that this will "go out of fashion in 5 years"? Historically this seems extremely unlikely. If anything, tens of millions of people going out of poverty every year are going to be consuming even more chips.
      • adventured 5y ago
        And every year 80+ million people come of age such that they become electronics consumers, buying smartphones, laptops and so on. A billion new electronics consumers every ~12 years. The world is going to need a lot more chip manufacturing capacity over the next few decades.
    • ryan93 5y ago
      The water doesn’t disappear. It stays h2o
      • lazide 5y ago
        Just now in a place/form (underground or in the sky, and if underground usually contaminated) that makes it economically far less valuable - maybe even useless. If the economics of water didn't matter, we'd be happy to build nuke power plants and run condensers all day to get it, but the reality is the marginal cost of water determines the feasibility of vast sections of economic activity, and that determines the fortunes (or not) of people and their leaders in concrete ways. This is also true of other natural resources of course - oil, iron, coal, uranium, etc.
• mschuster91 5y ago
  > The more I think about it, the more US infra/urban planning makes absolutely 0 sense to me. Seems to more closely follow tax breaks and tax income than necessarily smart resource allocation. An issue that doesn't just plague the US. Here in the EU, we have similar issues with governments from local city councils to federal governments doing anything they can to poach businesses. Tax breaks, subventions, lax law enforcement (e.g. Ireland vs GDPR)... it's madness. And the problem is, you can't simply go ahead and centralize that planning because you always have to be afraid of a political party taking over and completely abusing that power in the next legislative period.
• new_guy 5y ago
  Probably a good time to remind people that this entire planet is 70% water. Water shortage shouldn't be a thing, but greed and short sightedness is.
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Probably a good time to remind people that only 3% of that is fresh water. Fresh water shortage is definitely a thing.
    • coldacid 5y ago
      Desalinization is a thing, and one that's often overlooked because the people holding the purse strings are generally cheap-asses.
      • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Desalination requires high energy inputs. It also creates highly salted water as waste (some gets cleaned, other water gets i cleaned) that is difficult to deal with. Given cheap energy and somewhere to store the waste water, it could be viable.
      • NineStarPoint 5y ago
        Desalinization is an extremely energy intensive process for the amount of water we use. Eventually we probably will produce so much energy that that’s less of a concern, but at the moment we’re having plenty of issues getting our fossil fuel usages lowered without adding Desalinization to our civilization’s requirements.
        • standardUser 5y ago
          Desalination can be achieved using the cheapest energy source there is, solar.
  • thrashh 5y ago
    It’s not greed and shortsightedness. It’s logistics. Logistics is expensive af
• ckastner 5y ago
  > Doesn't chip making a lot of water Can anyone share an insight on why this is the case? (I'm assuming it is true because I've heard the claim quite often on HN.) It's not really obvious to me where water is consumed during the fabrication process. It doesn't end up in the chips, so where does it go? If it were just used for cooling, it would be returned somewhere.
  • mwint 5y ago
    There’s a lot of chemistry as part of the chip making process. Water is often an ingredient mixed with concentrated nasty stuff to get less concentrated, but still nasty stuff. Then they do something with it (like wash a part), but you can’t then effectively recover all the water. This is how it was explained to me by someone who works directly on the process; I could be butchering the explanation.
    • deelowe 5y ago
      This is my understanding as well. There's a lot of washing of components involved in the process. Cleanliness is crucial to chip manufacturing so wafers are constantly being washed. In newer lithographies, water is a crucial part of the the photo etching process itself (X-Ray IIRC).
      • sanxiyn 5y ago
        Re use of water in lithography: it became necessary at 90 nm level (~2004), so it is not exactly new. Water is used to bend light. (Isn't it amazing?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_lithography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_lithography While this use requires extreme purity, it is not a big use in terms of volume.
  • ksec 5y ago
    As mentioned, they are used to clean / wash off chemicals from wafers. And not just any water, but Ultrapure Water [1], it is an actual terminology, not marketing speak. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrapure_water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrapure_water
• ovi256 5y ago
  > Seems to more closely follow tax breaks and tax income It follows feasibility, AFAIK. All new manufacturing is in Southern US states because they're the ones that allow new plants to be built. The others tie projects down in long, expensive, non-successful environmental studies. At this point, it's easier to bring water to the desert (Arizona) than get approval for a manufacturing facility in a non-desert.
  • IgorPartola 5y ago
    A thousand years from now your last sentence will be a proverb if unknown origin.
    • dntrkv 5y ago
      Israel, UAE, and the Saudis have figured it out, you really think the US can't? Arizona is close to the ocean and has plenty of sunlight. Solar power + desalination will make this a non-issue in the next 40 years.
      • lazide 5y ago
        UAE and the Saudis are desperately diversifying their economies and the royal families of those countries are desperately extracting wealth from those nations because they know their current approaches are fundamentally economically unviable without very high margin oil - and the market value, margins, and quantity available of that oil long term is highly suspect. Israel is also investing heavily in knowledge work and other high margin industries, as well as investing outside the country, in an attempt to get high margin, high value income to offset the dangerous economic risks they have, in part due to limited and expensive water - and which for very strong and fundamental religious reasons still gives a very, very strong incentive for them to stay and stay functional. Israel in particular has a history of wars and armed conflict around the Jordan River (November 1964 to May 1967 and others). There is a saying in the West - Whiskey is for drinkin', water is for fightin' - and it is very apparent how true it is if you watch how things develop over time. Water is life in the desert.
      • 5y ago
• NortySpock 5y ago
  https://youtu.be/Dq04GpzRZ0g?t=472 https://youtu.be/Dq04GpzRZ0g?t=472 Asianometry did a breakdown on water usage of chip fabs in Taiwan and Arizona, including noting Arizona's state-wide water management plan, and pointing out that land-use wise, a chip plant makes more money per acre (gross revenue, and in property taxes) than other commercial or industrial or farming zones. A gallon of water makes more money in a chip plant than in an almond tree. (Especially since it can be cleaned and reused, rather than evaporated as in a tree.)
  • 1234letshaveatw 5y ago
    Wouldn't it make just as much money in a spot with no water usage concerns?
    • NortySpock 5y ago
      Sure, but where else in the country has no hurricanes, no tornados, and no earthquakes? A dry desert on top of a continental plate is a relatively disaster-free zone. When insuring your multi-billion-dollar fab... apparently zero disasters is a plus.
      • kd913 5y ago
        Do you really think there will be zero disasters in Arizona in the coming years? Sure the plant may survive a water crisis, how about it's power grid? How about the local communities and states who will run out of water? Over the next 20 years, I wouldn't rank Arizona highly for stability.
• dcchambers 5y ago
  Wishful thinking, but would be nice if Intel could take over that Foxconn plant in Wisconsin that has been a complete failure. There's 1180 cubic miles (1299318214239334 gallons) of fresh water right there in Lake Michigan.
• hosh 5y ago
  I live in Phoenix and have heard some of the local discourse about this. Fabs need a lot of water, like a swimming pool. Once you fill it up, then you need comparatively less to stay operational. Intel has invested in both recycling water as well as partnering with organizations on water conservation and ecology projects. Arizona does draw water from the Colorado River, but among the four states, Arizona is at the bottom of the water rights. We get what is left over after Colorado, California, and Utah get their legal share. The biggest user of water here in Arizona are the commercial farmers. (The Hopi people practice dryland agriculture and so don’t irrigate at all; most everyone else irrigates using inefficient and destructive land management practices). Aquifers here have been draining, and it has been a big issue. Farmers are already getting restricted on water use this year (despite an unusually wet monsoon season), and water restrictions has not hit residential users yet. It is on the radar for policymakers though. Both TSMC and Intel are attracted to Arizona because it is seismically stable. They each had to invest an enormous amount in the more seismically active Taiwan and California, and it gets more sensitive the smaller the chips get. If we want to conserve more water, the most effective way is to change commercial farming practices. Fabs have already invested a lot to reducing ongoing water use. For an example of what I mean by better land management practices in regards to water: https://youtu.be/-8nqnOcoLqE https://youtu.be/-8nqnOcoLqE
  • icemelt8 5y ago
    Excellent informative reply.
  • da_chicken 5y ago
    > The biggest user of water here in Arizona are the commercial farmers. And farming has been booming in Arizona. I lived there about 10 years ago and even then there were a lot of complaints about all the tree farms (almonds, etc.) that were showing up in Arizona. Massive water consumption and virtually impossible to be sustainable in the desert.
    • MengerSponge 5y ago
      The irony is that with current incentives, it's a self-reinforcing cycle. Nuts have a huge return on investment, so nut farmers can afford to buy even very expensive water, so they plant more trees, etc etc.
• vmh1928 5y ago
  Some statistics about Arizona's water sources and where it goes. 72% of the water is used by agriculture. 6% to industry 22% to municipal use http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts But yes, water usage is a big issue in AZ at the moment with Lake Mead and Powell at very low levels which has triggered and will trigger more cuts to the use of Colorado River water via the Central Arizona Project canal. Arizona has no law even measuring, much less restricting groundwater pumping which is a big problem getting bigger as cuts in Colorado River usage lead to more pumping.
• cannabis_sam 5y ago
  Well, it’s a market, so the corporations with cashflow stand at the front of the queue. There is no other way of organizing this in our late stage capitalist shitscape… It’s unfortunate that poor people need to starve or freeze to death to keep billionaires “alive”, but that’s what our genocidal, fellow citizens have been voting for..
  • ryan93 5y ago
    Please try and actually contribute to the discussion. In reality countries without many billionaires have way more issues with water supply and heating.
    • cannabis_sam 5y ago
      Like you, who didn’t engage with what I actually said? Please don’t waste people’s time, thank you.
    • smolder 5y ago
      And we could have no issues with water or heating and no billionaires, unless you're suggesting that billionaires alone make such problems go away. In that case we should send ours to the countries without so many. We're a wealthy country, that's obvious, and while we've demonstrated the power of greed to get things done, we have done poorly at keeping it in check and harnessing it for good. We don't need to do away with billionaires or take away all corporate power but they shouldn't be making up the rules to suit themselves. On this point of water access, it seems pretty reasonable to charge progressively, but not so progressively that it's practical for small consumers to sell their excess cheap water to large consumers.
• subsubzero 5y ago
  And yet you have the east coast(north east in my example) which is extremely lush and has 0 water issues and most companies are building these large sites in western water poor areas, intel - arizona phab, tesla - nevada gigafactory, facebook, datacenter southern new mexico.
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    The east coast gets hit by several hurricanes each year, some of which result in disasters and states of emergency being declared and cause billions of dollars worth of damage.
    • willcipriano 5y ago
      North east isn't that bad, that's mostly the south east.
      • heavyset_go 5y ago
        There are at least a few devastating storms in the Northeast each decade. Even the ones that aren't completely devastating can impact sensitive production equipment.
• Galaxity 5y ago
  I don't understand why people keep saying Lake Mead when referring to water use. Technically the CAP canal come from Lake Havasu. But it's all from the Colorado River. Regardless it's not the primary source of water. The majority of water for the Phoenix area comes from central Arizona rivers. The Salt river project, the Salt river and Verde, etc. You can see the big reservoirs to the east of Phoenix and from groundwater.
• adminscoffee 5y ago
  very good point about the water, side note for anyone reading this. we really ought to invest heavily in permaculture (restoring eco-systems). anyone who doesn't know exactly what i am talking about please check out the this "tech". it is a lot cooler than it sounds. the process can restore underground watersheds in the dessert and bring back forests. it's a science, but can be learned outside of a university on your own if you don't want to do more schooling, at first i thought it was some hippy dippy stuff but it has fangs
  • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    I enjoy a lot of aspects of permaculture, but a lot of it is cargo-culting pseudoscience. There's very little understanding of _why_ the techniques that they espouse work except for vague principles. I really wish more engineers took the time to do permaculture and documented their designs, instead of hippie experimenters.
• ktistec 5y ago
  The average golf course in Arizona uses 450,000 gallons a day according to [1]. According to [2], this means we're talking about 4-8 golf courses per day. There are over 200 golf courses near Phoenix, so your concern is legitimate the water usage here is marginal relative to the economic impact. As other commenters have pointed out, if you really want to impact water issues, there are far more efficient ways to tackle them. [1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2021/06/14/arizona-golf-courses-fight-water-conservation-efforts/5032190001/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... [2] https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/25055/Ultrapure-water-semiconductor-fab https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/25055/Ultrapure-water-sem...
• downrightmike 5y ago
  These fabs will likely be water neutral because requirements that they treat the water before giving it back to the city basically make it clean enough to use again.
• sheepybloke 5y ago
  One thing I don't see discussed in the comments is the trade off of resources. While water is an important resource, a quick Google show that a "Large semiconductor fabs use as much as 100 megawatt-hours of power each hour, which is more than many automotive plants or oil refineries do." [1] If you look at a cost analysis, I'm sure the price of energy far outweighs the total price of getting their water for the plant. By building in AZ, which has the ability to get a lot of solar and cheaper energy, they can reduce that cost dramatically, so the economics can still seem viable. My company is also energy constrained and we went through a similar analysis recently. It's hard to say no when you can cut your energy costs literally by a third. [1]: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/client_service/operations/pdfs/bringing_fabenergyefficiency.ashx#:~:text=A%20typical%20semiconductor%20fabrication%20plant,year%20as%20about%2050%2C000%20homes.&text=Large%20semiconductor%20fabs%20use%20as,plants%20or%20oil%20refineries%20do https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/client_serv....
• Cheyana 5y ago
  The current fab here in Chandler, Arizona recycles all of its water now.