Lean Green and Clean: How TI's Eco-Fab Combines
Sustainability/Profitability
An interview with Texas Instruments' Paul Westbrook, about
how innovative thinking enables their latest million-square foot high-efficiency
chip fab to deliver a green future and a green bottom line.
by Lee H. Goldberg
The handful of semiconductor companies who still produce their products in their own fab facilities are players in the industrial equivalent of a high-stakes poker game where shrewd betting can play off handsomely and a few misplayed cards can spell disaster. But rather than play it safe when they designed the new wafer processing facility in Richardson, TX, Texas Instruments made a bold decision to use environmental performance as part of the guiding principles in its design. By bringing together smart design, business and environmental practices, they have managed to create what is arguably one of the one of the most cost-effective and most eco-friendly manufacturing operations in the world. Nearly ready to enter operation, the Richardson facility is projected to enjoy dramatically lower operating costs, saving an estimated $11 per wafer in energy and related processing expenses compared to its other state-of-the art operations.
But the road to eco-nirvana was a rocky one, with the first step being convincing TI top brass that economic and environmental considerations could co-exist, and even support each other. Paul Westbrook, TI's Sustainable Development Manager took on this challenge and went on to win the confidence of the architects, facilities designers, equipment mangers and construction workers who worked together to change the industry's ideas of what's possible. In this interview, Mr. Westbrook shares his experiences, insights and lessons learned from the Richardson project.
greenTECHZONE: How big is the RFAB (Richardson facility), and what is its capacity compared to your other plants?
PW: The current complex is the biggest TI has built to date, covering
1.1 million gross square feet, of which 220,000 sq. ft. is clean room space.
The remainder is split between administrative, support, and maintenance
areas. Our previous fab, DMOS6, has 170,000 sq. ft. of clean rooms. Besides
being the biggest facility we've got, it's got room to expand as market
factors dictate. We can add capacity by either blowing out a wall to extend
the current production area or build a second facility as a mirror image
next to the existing one.
greenTECHZONE: Why did you decide to apply green design techniques to your new operation?
PW: I designed and built my own passive/active solar home and knew that it would be possible and practical to apply these techniques to the new facility. I also know that these technologies work best when they are incorporated from day one rather than as retrofits. It allows you to take advantage of cascading efficiencies that result when you incorporate one conservation technology that allows you to save in multiple places. For example, if you design out enough heat load, you can eliminate many tons of air conditioning equipment from your construction costs.
greenTECHZONE: How did you convince TI to implement such a radical approach to building your flagship wafer fab?
PW: I knew from my own experiences that a sustainable approach was possible and could actually save money, but I had to prove it to my management. Actually, I had double motivation because I also wanted to show that we could afford to keep our manufacturing base on U.S. soil rather than moving good-paying jobs overseas.
Much of convincing them to take the green route
involved showing them the hard numbers about how sustainable architecture
and operating practices could help us stay ahead of the rising costs of
energy, water, waste treatment, waste disposal, etc… One of the things
that helped me get their attention was to invite them over to the home I
built myself and live in which features passive solar architecture, active solar hot water
heating, a geothermal heat pump HVAC system, and a 3200 gallon rainwater recycling
system and heat exchanger ventilator. (Ed Note: For details on Mr.
Westbrook's home, check out the photos and data on Enerjazz.com). 
Seeing a comfortable, attractive
house that uses a fraction of the energy and water of a conventional tract
home raised a lot of interest and convinced even the skeptics that such
a thing was possible.
greenTECHZONE: Was there something different about the design process you used to create RFAB?
PW: Yes -- it was different from two very complementary angles. Rather than take a past fab design and simply update it, we started with a clean sheet and kept both environmental and economic factors on the table at the same time -- something that forced us to look for innovative approaches to solving the tensions that arose. In the end, this was instrumental in enabling us to meet some very aggressive environmental and cost-reduction goals. Surprisingly, the environmental and cost savings goals dovetailed quite nicely in the final design. In fact, this building cost us 30% less per square foot that any previous facility we have built.
greenTECHZONE: What green construction techniques did you use? What exactly is LEED?
PW: LEED is the acronym for the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system. It's nationally recognized as a practical set of metrics for defining green building design and performance. The LEED rating system gave all the players in the project a common metric and a common language to describe environmental performance. It also gave us a good measuring stick that all parties -- i.e. contractors, architects, engineering firms, suppliers and TI management -- could use to work towards.
One great example of the innovative construction techniques we used
is a reflective roof that knocked 100 tons of cooling (approximately 50
kW) worth of capacity requirements from the building from the get-go. The
white roofs have also been found to last 10 - 30% longer than conventional
black ones. Choosing better doors, windows, shell components and using much
more natural daylight instead for area lighting all contributed to reducing
the building's energy consumption. We got a double benefit because cutting
the amount of energy we used also cut the resulting heat load that the A/C
system would have to remove. This, and selecting energy-efficient equipment
allowed us to completely eliminate one 1600-ton chiller. The million dollars
we saved on the chiller paid for many of the up-front costs of the other
improvements in the building -- not to mention the significantly-lower energy
costs we will enjoy year-after-year.
greenTECHZONE: Could you give us a few more specific examples of the innovative things you did to make the building and its operations so efficient?
PW: One of the things we learned from the charrette process (an all-stakeholder design exercise) that we held in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Institute was to make extensive use of natural daylight and high-efficiency dimmable fluorescent lights. When they are coupled with motion sensing light fixtures, we were able to save around 80% of the 1-2 W/sq. ft. traditionally allocated to area lighting. An important side-benefit was that the natural light and improved environment actually made the employees happier.
We also had a breakthrough with our HVAC systems. By carefully analyzing our cooling requirements, we were able to split the tasks between chillers running at 40 degrees and others which drew less energy running at 54 degrees. Additionally, the waste heat from the chillers and air compressors is recovered and provides most of the hot water for the plant. We have only one operational boiler (and a backup) versus the five equivalent units we'd usually use for a plant this size. This reduces our NOx and C02 emissions dramatically.
There were lots of innovations in the building itself too. For example, we used lots of recycled materials, including 20 - 25% fly ash content in the concrete, wheat board for architectural panels, and certified wood in the interior structure. Once our contractors understood the concept behind LEED principles, they got behind it in a big way and helped us meet the stringent goals for recycling and waste reduction we'd need to achieve certification. Thanks to them, almost no construction waste went to a landfill. We developed systems to collect, sort and recycle our used concrete, several types of plastics, lumber scraps and scrap metal. In the end, this meant that 90% of the scrap we generated during the construction process was recovered. And besides the hundreds of tons of junk we kept out of a landfill, the project actually enjoyed a slight net savings -- even though we were paying a full-time person to administer our recycling efforts.
Our efforts did not stop at the building. The plant sits on 92 acres of land, part of which we landscaped as part of a rainwater catch system. The 2.7 million gallon rainwater basin controls runoff and acts as a cleanup basin. We also used drought-tolerant native plants in the remaining landscape to eliminate the need for any irrigation water beyond what we get from the catch basin. For more information on the innovative green features of RFAB, see RFAB in a Nutshell.
greenTECHZONE: What were some of the key conservation technologies in the manufacturing systems that you have put in place? Which of these systems are unique to this plant?
PW: Oh, that was much more difficult because there has been so much less development done in greening up the actual semiconductor manufacturing systems. But we did what we could. For one thing, we recognized that more than 50% of a plant's power goes to tools themselves, with half of that (25%) going to vacuum pumps. Early on, we called in our vacuum pump suppliers and asked them what they could do to save power. Several vendors asked us to include a control path in our equipment and the plant wiring that would allow tool to signal its vacuum pump to idle down when not needed. So now all equipment will have this when it's installed. We realized an additional 30 - 40% savings in operational energy consumption by using variable speed drives and other efficiency improvements.
We're also working with manufacturers of the smaller chillers we use throughout the plant to yield similar efficiencies. Another strategy we are have in place is long-term engagements with tool manufacturers that include a commitment from them to reduce the power consumption on subsequent generations of their products. Our advanced water recycling system uses water 2-3 times before it's passed on to the treatment plant. This cuts our overall use by 35%.
greenTECHZONE: How has the plant's environmental footprint been reduced compared to a conventional plant of a similar size?
PW: RFAB is not fully operational but when it is we expect to se an overall energy savings of 20+%, a 50% emissions reduction, and, as I mentioned before, use 35% less water than a comparable plant of this size.
greenTECHZONE: How much extra did the plant's green features cost?
PW: Actually all the green features we used added only $1.5 million, or less than 1% to the cost of the project. But we're also very proud of the fact that our design process enabled us to build an ultra-efficient building that cost 30% less per square foot to build than our previous facility.
greenTECHZONE: What level of improvements in operating costs do you expect to see over a conventional plant?
PW: We'll see most of the savings in reduced energy and water consumption. At the present cost of our utilities, we're expecting to save $1 million the first year of operation and ramp to $4 million a year as we enter full production.
Some basic facts and figures about TI's Richardson wafer fab facility:
In 2004, Texas Instruments embarked on an ambitious project to build the world's first green, LEED-certified semiconductor manufacturing facility in an effort to reduce the company's impact on the environment and reduce operating costs. It would also be the largest LEED-certified building in the North Texas region at the time. After collaboration with the Rocky Mountain Institute, months of research, careful planning and innovative design, this tremendous project came to fruition. Construction of the company's first high-efficiency, million-square-foot chip fab was initiated in late 2004.
| Cost to build | $321 M |
| Investment in green building | $<2 M |
| First year ROI from efficiency gains | $750,000 |
| Full operation annual efficiency savings | >$4 M/year |
| Clean room size | 220,000 sq. ft. |
| Complex total size | 1.1M sq. ft. |
| Water saved over traditional fab | 35% |
| Energy saved over traditional fab | >20% |
| Production cost saved vs. Asian operation | $11/wafer (200-mm equiv.) |
Innovative Design
Sustainable design requires a holistic approach in planning, construction and operations that includes all aspects of building development and use: sustainable land use, water efficiency and energy conservation, sustainable material use and improved indoor air quality. A few innovations are listed below:
Green Recognition - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
LEED is a green building rating system developed by the US Green Building Council. TI is pursuing LEED-NC, for new construction projects. The system assesses building practices in five areas -- site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. TI is currently LEED-Registered. Upon completion of RFAB, the company will be eligible to become certified, as early as 2006. TI has registered the admin building and fab separately. The project goals are a gold certification for the admin building and a silver certification for the fab.
Summit Award
TI received the 2005 Summit Award for Environmental Excellence, which recognizes a company program that demonstrates environmental leadership that also enhances business performance. TI was one of six finalists for the award, which is presented annually by the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
More information on the Summit Awards is available at: http://leeds.colorado.edu/summit/