Decarbonizing Facilities: Shifting Materials and Mindsets in Semiconductor Construction

David Cathey is the Director of Business Development at GCS Cleanroom Solutions, a company that specialises in modular cleanroom components. He spoke to Ultrafacility on decarbonising the materials supply chain for semiconductor facilities. David will also be leading a round table on ‘Reducing the Carbon Footprint in New Facilities’ at the Ultrafacility conference in Austin, December 2025.

How are cleanroom material suppliers adapting their products and disclosures to meet expectations around emissions?

Suppliers are starting to get decarbonization certificates, proving that they can be carbon neutral when generating the material. A lot of companies are moving towards carbon neutral because the facilities need to reach that point. This is only going to increase with the industry growth caused by AI.

For cleanrooms, the materials used in the physical components are a significant factor for the carbon footprint. The original cleanroom wall panels were typically chip board and epoxy paint. There's an environmental impact generating gypsum, in mining it as well as processing and trucking it to your facilities. We have advanced beyond that, more commonly using metal, which is recyclable, but obviously still goes through a process to produce.I believe we will advance and find other ways to be more environmentally friendly, starting by making the facilities that are manufacturing the raw materials more environmentally friendly will significantly help.

Where it is possible, we try to reduce the carbon footprint by selecting more environmentally friendly vendors. For example, we get most of our steel from sustainable facilities, meaning that they're not generally pulling from the grid and from coal plants, everything down the line is trying to be cleaner.

Are there any key barriers that suppliers would face in decarbonising their products? Is there a trade-off on price or performance?
I believe the larger challenge is that when you go environmentally friendly, prices tend to reflect that. Because of this, facilities are sometimes hesitant to pay more to have a more environmentally friendly product. One of the larger challenges is getting people to see that there's a greater good to it. For performance, it actually has no impact.

Would you say that there's any innovations in clean room materials that are delivering significant emission reductions?

For cleanrooms in the in the US market, using unplasticized polyvinyl chloride (uPVC) is very common. However, in other countries, polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is more commonly available, which is much more environmentally friendly than uPVC. PET has a decarbonization certificate, which you can't get with the uPVC because it's plastic. Part of the challenge is getting people to start accepting and adapting to other materials, which can be difficult even if they meet almost the exact same resistances as the uPVC.
There's a lot of data out there to support the use of PET, but it’s unfortunately a bit of a mindset shift. We are trying to get people to become more aware of the product and adopt it, however no facility wants to be the first one to test it. I think that after the first few companies adopt it, its usage will increase

What role do Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) play in quantifying and reducing the carbon footprint of building materials?

Environmental Product Declarations have become vastly more important. A lot of facilities are looking to have strong EPDs that can show they are reducing the environmental impact to meet green building certifications.

We have EPDs at GCS, and architects, engineers, procurement teams, are all starting to ask for those more. Especially because a lot goes into making the architectural finishes like wall panels, so they are an important component inreducing your environmental impact.

Can you explain the process of EPD creation and how it impacts your decisions?
ISO compliance is the most important consideration to decide which products should have an EPD. For us internally, that is the wall and ceiling panels, because they consume the most amount of material. Then we'll go down the line and see where and how each manufacturer is procuring the material, how it's being manufactured. We verify down flow of all the products that we integrate into this one finished material and try to define them. We go as far back as possible, all the way down to the mining. That's how we generate the numbers and determine if this is an environmentally friendly product or not.

To what extent do you believe sustainability performance will become an important competitive advantage for cleanroom suppliers and fab contractors?

I believe that suppliers who are willing to be environmentally friendly will have an advantage. Companies are starting to realise that resources are finite, and we have to find ways to make products recyclable. As an example, for the PET, over 90% of the material for that wall panel could be recycled. The only thing that can't be recycled is the glue. So, people must start looking more into those finishes so we can recycle everything that we're using.

Right now, I don't see the competitive advantage as strong, at least in the US market. I believe European standards push sustainability further than in the US, because there's a lot more restrictions in place. In the US it's gaining traction. Many companies are starting to dig more into it but it's also very site specific. Culturally, some companies really care, while for others it’s less of a priority. They do care about it, but it's not as deep within the culture of the company.

David will be hosting a roundtable on Day two of the Ultrafacility conference, on Friday 5th December in Austin: