Convening Industries for a Sustainable Future

Cory Johnson:
We are joined right now by Todd Brady. He’s the chief sustainability officer for Intel, and what a great time to have a conversation about sustainability in semiconductors with Intel. Todd, glad to have you. Intel’s in such an interesting place. I’ve been covering Intel for decades, which makes me a newbie by Intel standards, but Intel’s in this really amazing point where the company’s launching this giant foundry business in ways that they haven’t been in the past and building a lot of foundries, maybe even more than they have in the past, all at the same time, at a time when issues of sustainability are of a greater concern, both to our society and to Intel more than ever before. What a time for you to have the gig you have.

Todd Brady:
Absolutely. Super exciting time. Intel products, Intel foundry, Intel corporate, redefining the company, and then sustainability. Everything going on outside the company, climate change, water pressure, you name it. There’s a lot to do and AI and how can we use AI to solve some of these big challenges that are out there. So, super exciting time to be in the industry and in sustainable…

Cory Johnson:
And over the next seven hours that we talk, we’re going to get through all those topics.

Todd Brady:
Absolutely.

Cory Johnson:
No, it won’t be seven hours. So let’s start with a few of these. So one of the things that I think is most amazing, I don’t even know where you start with amazing when it comes to semiconductor manufacturing, but the pace of innovation is incredible, particularly right now, and it has been for a long time, but really right now in very amazing ways AI driving a lot of that, both for AI and because of AI. But the planning involved in creating the facilities to make semiconductors stretches out into decades. And our understanding of climate change and the things that we do that pollute and the things we can do to keep from polluting are changing so rapidly. How do you take a 15, 20-year process and plan for the latest advances that may be 5 or 10 years away?

Todd Brady:
It’s one of the challenges that we have in such a dynamic industry. Whatever we think we’re going to do today, fast-forward 5, 10 years, guess what? The whole environment’s changed. So, one of the things that we’ve done in order to anchor ourselves into the future is, years ago, I think we published… I joined Intel in 1995. In 1994, we published our first corporate responsibility report where we put out environmental goals. And back then, they were annual goals we’d set each year. One of the things that I did when I came into my position and said, “Hey, we need to look longer term. We need to have these anchors in the future, these north stars that we are moving towards because there’s going to be so much dynamic change year to year.”

And so, we established decade-long goals. We did that first in 2010, set goals through 2020. Then, did that again in 2020 and set those goals through 2030, even 2040, 2050. Those goals would include things such as net-zero greenhouse gases and no waste to landfill, net positive water. But these are big audacious goals that give us that north star.

Cory Johnson:
They are.

Todd Brady:
So, no matter what’s going on day-to-day, year-to-year, we know where we’re headed. And that’s been very helpful in grounding us in our strategy.

Cory Johnson:
So let’s speak of the ground. Let’s talk about water. Why don’t we start there? What did water use look like for semiconductor manufacturing in 1990, and what’s it going to look like in 2030?

Todd Brady:
The biggest use of water in semiconductor manufacturing is ultrapure water, the water that’s used to rinse off the surface of the wafer in between the hundreds of different processes. That’s what you have. And back when I first started working on that, years and years ago, state-of-the-art technology for ultrapure water was it would take about two gallons of tap water, the water you’re getting from the city, the municipality to produce one gallon of ultrapure water. So about a 50% efficiency. And fast-forward to today, we’re over 90% efficient, so about 1.1 gallon of tap water to one gallon of ultrapure water. And so, that’s the first step is, how do you use that resource more efficiently because we’re going to need more and more of it as we move forward?

Number two then is, can you reclaim and reuse that water? And so, we’ve invested heavily in our manufacturing operations all around the world in state-of-the-art water reclaim facilities where we use the water in our manufacturing, the ultrapure water, we collect that water, retreat it, we send it back for reuse in our operations. And then, the third part of our strategy and the way that we get to net positive water, then again, the concept is, for every gallon of water we’re extracting from a watershed, we want to return a gallon or more of water. And so, I walk through the first two steps, use it more efficiently, then reuse it over and over again.

And then, the third part is, invest outside the company in the communities in which we operate to put water back into the local watersheds. An example would be working with the local farmer agricultural industry, which uses 75% of the water in many places around the world where we operate. If we can help them be more efficient, that results in more water back to the aquifer. And so, we’ve been able to achieve that now in four countries: US, India, Costa, Rica, Mexico. So again, looking ahead, looking strategically, what do we want to accomplish as a company? When we have that in north star, we can then put the strategy to use.

Cory Johnson:
That’s pretty amazing. What about building materials and how that’s changed? Because again, and I mention change because I think that, well, all of us started before today, and so, we remember a time when things are different and it’s hard to not want to make things the way they were and think about how they can be in the future.

Todd Brady:
Several years ago, when we were building our buildings and going through a growth spurt, this was even a decade or so ago, we began looking at what’s called the US Green Building Council LEED Standards. And you see these a lot in office buildings and whatnot because this building has made Platinum LEED, Gold, et cetera. And we actually went to the US Green Building Council and said, “Hey, we would like to develop standards for manufacturing facilities as well.” They didn’t exist at the time because they had written their standards around an office building in New York City as an example, not a semiconductor.

Cory Johnson:
I built a LEED house once.

Todd Brady:
Oh, you did? Okay.

Cory Johnson:
That was a thing. And there were strange things we had to do and obvious things we had to do to hit that certification level.

Todd Brady:
Exactly. So, we took that framework and said, “How can we apply that to a manufacturing facility?” And so, we actually worked with the US Green Building Council, we had a committee of other manufacturers from a wide variety of different industries, and came up with standards on how to apply that LEED thinking, which is essentially how do we design the building to be more energy efficient, to be more water efficient, to generate less waste, those kinds of things. And so, we’ve integrated that into all of the construction, which we have going on all around the world today in building LEED factories, which then, at the end of the day, result in factories, which reduce our costs because we’re using less electricity as an example. So, it’s really going to win-win in focusing on that design from the ground up.

Cory Johnson:
I’m trying to think back to all the CEOs of Intel I’ve talked to about sustainability over the years, and I know that it has been a top down concern, if you will, and I suspect it’s been a bottom up concern. But how do you get buy-in to an organization whose goals and to individuals whose goals are just not… Sell more stuff, get higher prices, do it cheaper, faster, better, get to work on time, all of the things that we’re trying to do or that people at the company are trying to do. How do you get people buying into sustainability?

Todd Brady:
It’s a great point. There’s so many priorities within any company. So, how do you get the focus? So, one thing I would say is, I’ve been very fortunate in that, joining Intel almost 30 years ago, this ethos, this credo in sustainability and building with the environment in mind was there. The foundation was there. Gordon Moore was very much the environmentalist and-

Cory Johnson:
Founder of Intel for-

Todd Brady:
Absolutely.

Cory Johnson:
Those of you who don’t know.

Todd Brady:
He was one of our founders, the author of Moore’s Law. After he retired from Intel, he started up his own foundation, which is all focused around environmental… The Gordon Moore Foundation. And so, he created that bedrock, that foundation. So, that was hugely beneficial. And then, you had individuals within the company when I first joined who were leading manufacturing and had that belief in, “We can grow, but we can reduce our impact as we grow, and that’s what we should be doing.” So, I can’t take credit for any of that. That was there. I’d latched onto it and said, “Okay, how do we take things to the next level?”

One of the ways that we’ve been able to focus people’s attention is quite frankly, tying sustainability to everyone’s pocketbook, everybody’s bonus. So, at Intel, for over a decade now, everyone’s bonus, from Pat, our CEO, all the way down to an entry-level technician, is tied to our performance on sustainability targets. And we have those that we implement every year. One of those targets this year, you mentioned sales, is actually tying sustainability to our sales. So, our sales team has a target to achieve a certain number of sales tied to sustainability. We have similar targets for our product groups.

Cory Johnson:
What does mean? What do you mean tied to sustainability?

Todd Brady:
So, as they are selling a product, are they selling the sustainability aspects of that product as part of the sale, and is that important in closing the sale? And so, they’re tracking that. Our product groups have targets around energy efficiency and designing new products. Some of the platforms and systems, designing them in a way that it reduces the carbon footprint, that’s part of their goals, their targets. And then, on the operations side, Intel Foundry that I’m a part of, it’s traditional things like we have a target around renewable electricity, target around reducing our carbon emissions, our water usage, our waste generation, etc. So linking that really-

Cory Johnson:
This might be out of left field, but I was surprised to have one of my good friends throw a climate denial comment to me, maybe just because he was trying to tick me off because that’s what my friends do to me. But I wonder if that plays a role internally or externally at all, just the people who just don’t want to believe that climate change is a man-made, real thing even though science tells us that. And yours is a company of science, is that an issue ever for you?

Todd Brady:
Sure. An issue both internally, externally. You take any topic, any issue, and you’re going to have people on all sides of the issue. And so, I think the way to diffuse that, from my vantage point, is to link sustainability to the business value. If we make a more energy efficient product that has better performance per watt, we’re going to sell more of those products. That’s hard to argue with. If we use less electricity in our operations, we are going to reduce our operational costs. That’s hard to argue with. And so, to the extent that we can tie as many of our sustainability initiatives as possible to our business benefit, and we believe they’re linked, then, that defuses a lot of the discussion or a lot of the debate around some of the issues that can become politicized.

Cory Johnson:
So, it sounds like you’re saying that you can prove out that the benefits go beyond climate.

Todd Brady:
Exactly.

Cory Johnson:
And not to be too Pollyanna-ish about it, but in closing, it sounds like you’re saying Intel’s got a better product and is a better company than its competitors because of its sustainability efforts.

Todd Brady:
You said it better than I could. Thank you. You’re hired. So, well done. Let me give you another-

Cory Johnson:
I don’t think I got another 29 years in me, but I appreciate the offer. No, but seriously, is that a thing? Is Intel a better company than, I don’t have to name your competitors, but then, we all know who your big competitors are, because of your sustainability focus?

Todd Brady:
We absolutely believe that our sustainability is a differentiator for us. It’s an area where we have focused considerable time and resources over the years in a way that many of our competitors have not. We do think that differentiates us. More and more of our conversations with our customers going forward is, they have all set similar sustainability goals. They’re all trying to achieve net-zero greenhouse gases. We can help them achieve that faster and sooner. We think that is an advantage for us.

Cory Johnson:
Just fantastic. Todd Brady is the chief sustainability officer for Intel. We appreciate your time.

Todd Brady:
Great. Thank you. Great to be here.