A few days ago Nvidia revealed its carbon emissions grew by 53% in 2025 alone. Anger is rising worldwide at the prodigious energy and water demands of gargantuan AI data centers. But there is a hidden cost: the toxic supply chain that manufactures advanced semiconductors that fill those data centers.

Over the past three years, Nvidia’s supply chain emissions have more than tripled , and the trend is likely to continue as the company’s GPU shipments are forecast to grow at 26 percent per year.

Nvidia outsources all its manufacturing to Taiwanese semiconductor maker TSMC. As every new generation of microchips uses more energy, water, and toxic chemicals than the last, and as the AI frenzy is driving unprecedented demands for more GPU semiconductors, the island has been left to deal with ballooning energy demands and emissions. TSMC’s most advanced fabs require 1GW of electricity and 100,000 tonnes of water a day, about five times more than a 1GW data centre. And TSMC is building at least 10 new fabs in Taiwan to meet the demands of Nvidia, now its biggest customer, and other AI companies. To meet this surge, Taipower, Taiwan’s utility, plans to build 18 gas plants totalling about 18.2 GW, roughly 40 percent of Taiwan’s current generating capacity, largely to meet the demand of the semiconductor industry, led by TSMC. This will further lock Taiwan into fossil-fuel dependency, even as the island already relies on fossil fuels for more than 80 percent of its electrcity.

In South Korea 2 high tech giants - Samsung and SK Hynix – are also riding the AI semi-conductor boom. SK Hynix makes the advanced memory chips for Nvidia’s AI GPUs. The latest HBM3E memory chips are really 12 DDR memory chips stacked on top of each other, each one takes 80kg to produce, which means the latest Nvidia GPUs emit nearly 500kg in carbon from their memory chips alone. The next generation of memory, HBM4, will be even more carbon intensive - and the next generation of Nvidia GPUs will need even more of them.

To meet demand SK hynix is building out massive new fabs across South Korea including in the Yongin Mega-cluster - the largest industrial complex ever conceived. When built, this mega cluster will require about the same amount of power as the Netherlands - and 6 massive new gas plants will provide that power.  

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