By Steve Balogh, Co-Founder at Hedgerow Analysis / Managing Director at BioPhysical Economics Institute
The outsized inland impact from Hurricane Helene has shed light on the fragility of our supply chains. The town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina is one of the few places on the planet that has the highly pure quartz required to produce the chips essential to our smart phones, computers, vehicles, and other consumer tech devices and appliances. Spruce Pine was hard hit by Helene and as a result the quartz mine is shut down.
The impact: Silicon semiconductors, the building blocks of computer chips, are made from purified silicon, which comes from quartz. The silicon is shaped into thin slices called wafers. Then, special materials are added to the wafers to change how electricity flows through them. Using light and chemicals, tiny patterns are etched onto the wafers to create the circuits. Metals are added to make connections, and unwanted parts are carefully removed. The result is a chip that can control electrical signals in devices like phones and computers. The energy and materials needed to fabricate these chips is well documented, and despite the intense heat and conditions needed to grow the crystals that become wafers, the process has become more efficient as the industry has matured.
The thin line which represents the environmental impact of mining and refining this essential input into the life cycle inventory of semiconductors, is currently severed, and when it is reattached, is about to get a bit thicker. The storm also reminds us of the importance of other smaller but no less important energy inputs that are typically missing from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) product diagrams – the input of human labor and the multitude of systems which support it. Restoring electricity, potable water, the town’s grocery store, and damaged roads needed for commuting, represent non-trivial amounts of energy inputs that will be required to get the town, mine and its skilled laborers back on their feet.
In the long run, this effort will be amortized over billions of chips and therefore continue to pale in comparison to the direct energy requirements into the fabrication plant. So, the “thin line” of inputs for highly pure silicon in semiconductors will remain relatively thin. But for the time being, Helene is shining a light on these upstream material and energy inputs, and the societal underpinnings which we typically take for granted in life cycle assessments.
The BioPhysical Economics Institute takes a systems science approach to analyzing key energy and material flows in the economy. Through its internally funded research, corporate partnerships, and product analyses, we uncover the leverage points and vulnerabilities in the key components of the world’s energy and economic systems. Often new emergent properties of those systems are uncovered, which can help inform public policy, corporate planning and decision making, and resilience efforts against environmental impacts.