Texas Instruments is constructing an innovative new million-square-foot microchip fabrication plant in Richardson, two facilities that have the goal of achieving LEED Gold and Silver certifications.

A few years ago Texas Instruments began planning to build a new 1.1 million square foot wafer fab complex in Richardson, TX. Wafer fabs, which produce semiconductors used in a myriad of electronic devices, are enormous factories and therefore consume a large amount of resources. At $3 billion dollars each to fully build and equip, they are also quite a large investment. In order to keep this fab in the US the TI design team was challenged with a 30% capital cost reduction goal. While several teams were assembled to focus on initial costs, another team quietly formed to attack the cost issue from a different angle – sustainable design. This team was dubbed Fabscape.

Large fabs can see utility bills reach $20M/year, so the TI Fabscape team understood that slashing these costs would also be a long term advantage for the company. The biggest obstacle they faced was the belief that green, sustainable buildings cost more to build – which would be in direct conflict with the initial cost reduction goal.

The Fabscape team began doing research and writing papers on various sustainable design issues – from the always popular waterless urinal to complex split chiller plants with heat recovery. About this time team leader Paul Westbrook met Amory Lovins at the Sustainable Dallas Conference. Amory, an efficiency guru who is CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), had taken a keen interest in wafer fabs and was anxious for the chance to be involved in the design of a new facility. The idea of a design Charrette was born.

In December of 2003 a team of 30 TI employees and a dozen folks from RMI met for a 3-day brainstorming festival. It was an energetic and energizing three days. Some teams talked in btu's while others conversed in gpm and pressure head. Amory talked to the TI VP’s in terms of ROI (return on investment). One of the RMI architects was quietly keeping a LEED score sheet on the side. At the conclusion of the Charrette many of the sustainable ideas had been woven into a workable fabric. It was noted that by just doing some of TI’s existing best practices that we could achieve a LEED Certified level. Implementing items discussed at the Charrette could drive to LEED Silver or Gold. LEED became our guiding tool to help carry the ideas forward.

Because fabs are such a large investment there is considerable, and justifiable, reluctance to make sweeping changes in the design of the facility. Ironically, the capital cost reduction goal was forcing design modifications and this actually opened the door to sustainable design concepts.

Once LEED certification was adopted as an official project goal an interesting phenomena occurred. People began asking if various ideas would score a LEED point. Those familiar with LEED know that very few individual items will score a point, but the combination of many small actions add up to a point. The competitive side of people took over and they wanted to score points. Certified wasn’t good enough – they wanted Silver. Silver doesn’t sound as good as Gold – let’s go for that. The thought of scoring a point kept many ideas alive and eventually got them incorporated into the design.

It was not always easy. Anyone familiar with sustainable design knows that you have to look at things from a higher level perspective. A simple definition of sustainable design is the balance of people, profit, and the planet. These are sometimes seen as conflicting goals, but that’s because our view might not be broad enough. The design process can become compartmentalized and disconnected. Decisions are often made based on a narrow set of criteria. The decision might be good for a particular group but bad for the project as a whole. Cheap lights might make the electrical design team look good on the budget, but the operating cost and cost to condition the waste heat will cost much more than the one time capital savings.

The TI team chose data and analysis over “rules of thumb” and “standard” designs. By continuing to drill down into issues and understand the root of problems they were able to make a number of fundamental changes to how fabs are designed. The desire to score another LEED point kept everyone energized to keep digging for a solution.

• Passive solar building layout with exterior shade devices for cooling load reduction.
• Day lighting and light shelves for a more pleasant and energy efficient work environment.
• Reflective roofs and concrete for energy savings and urban heat island mitigation.
• Networked controllable light fixtures with built in motion and photo sensors for individual control and energy savings.
• Over 20% fly ash in the concrete.
• A 2.7 million gallon rain water collection pond for site irrigation.
• Native plants, organically maintained, to reduce irrigation needs.
• A windmill powered pond aerator.
• Full cutoff exterior lighting for energy savings and neighborhood consideration.
• A split chiller plant to optimize our cooling streams.
• Heat recovery on chillers and air compressors to eliminate boilers their associated emissions.
• High pressure spray humidification to eliminate more boilers.
• Premium efficiency motors with variable speed drives.
• Waterless urinals to save water.

TI will spend less than $2M (1% of the project budget) on LEED related issues. However, many of these items are efficiency upgrades which would have been considered regardless of LEED. And if you consider that the team met the 30% capital cost reduction goal you could probably say that our green building cost significantly less than a traditional one.

TI expects to achieve a 20% reduction in energy consumption and a 35% reduction in water consumption. This translates to at least $750K of operational savings during the first year. Savings will ramp to over $3M per year at full build out.

The project is on track for the stretch goals of LEED Gold for the Admin Building and LEED Silver for the Wafer Fab Complex. The fab will be ready for manufacturing tool installation by late 1Q 2006. The process of registering with LEED and exploring integrated design has resulted in positive and fundamental changes to TI’s fab design. These changes have resulted in a very nice balance of people, profit, and the planet.

Paul Westbrook is the Sustainable Development Manager at Texas Instruments. For additional information regarding this article, please contact Paul at p-westbrook@ti.com or 972-995-6700 - Texas Instruments, PO Box 650311, MS 360, Dallas, TX 75265. All comments are the sole responsibility of the author.

This article was originally posted 8/23/05.