The Importance of Sustainability at Intel

In this video, Intel’s chief sustainability officer Todd Brady shares more about Intel’s commitment to sustainability and the legacy he has carried forward from Intel co-founder Gordon Moore.

Fun Fact: Todd has visited Ohio many times and has met with environmental leaders across the state. He traveled to Cleveland in October 2023, and was honored by the National Association for Environmental, Health, Safety, and Sustainability Management (NAEM) with a Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing his contribution to Intel and the environmental field.

Environmental Management at Intel

Since 2022, we’ve held monthly meetings with first responders in Ohio to conduct preparedness trainings and to share updates about our construction progress and plans for the future. Safeguarding the health and safety of our workforce and our community is our top priority.

Intel has a long history of transparency and accountability with regards to our environmental stewardship efforts. Even before our first public Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) report published in 1994, Intel has EHS programs for its facilities worldwide that meet or exceed regulatory requirements.

For more than two decades, Intel has maintained multi-site, third-party-verified International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 and 45001 registrations to evaluate the effectiveness of our Environmental Management System. We also conduct regular EHS program self-assessments to validate EHS compliance at the individual site level. In addition, government officials inspect our facilities.

To better understand how Intel compares to others in our industry, we regularly benchmark our environmental performance with semiconductor and other large companies. We also engage our main suppliers on sustainability issues to help them reduce their climate and water impacts, reduce waste and identify circular solutions, advance green chemistry initiatives, and identify collaboration opportunities.

Read more in our Corporate Responsibility Report >

Protecting Air Quality and Reducing Our Emissions

Intel has been a leader in sustainable and environmentally-responsible semiconductor manufacturing for decades, and Ohio now joins our sites around the world in achieving ambitious sustainability commitments. Intel’s focus on environmental responsibility and protecting the health and safety of our workforce and the community drives us to continually strive to improve our operations and minimize our impact on the environment.  

To minimize our factory emissions—including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and carbon monoxide (CO)—we use emissions reduction strategies, including best available control technology such as thermal oxidizers, wet electrostatic precipitators, and wet scrubbers.

At many of our sites, we use rotary concentrator thermal oxidizers to remove VOCs. The emissions stream is preheated before it enters the combustion chamber of the thermal oxidizer, which also uses a pre-filter to prevent particles from impending the oxidizer’s ability to absorb VOCs while increasing energy efficiency to reduce natural gas use and associated emissions.

Our new fabs in Ohio will use similar abatement equipment to reduce emissions in accordance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency requirements.

We know transparency is important, and that’s why we publicly disclose our environmental impact on our Explore Intel website. Every Intel manufacturing site around the world posts this data every quarter to keep our communities informed. Additionally, we report progress toward our goals, including detailed inventories of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use, by location, in our annual Corporate Responsibility Report.

More broadly, Intel has set aggressive greenhouse gas (GHG) goals to conserve energy, purchase renewable electricity and reduce emissions for more than two decades. We invest in chemical substitution, abatement, energy conservation, process optimization, and renewable and alternative electricity. As a result of these actions, and despite the 3x increase in manufacturing output and evolution of Intel’s manufacturing process technology complexity, we have avoided more than 80% of our global, cumulative Scope 1 and 2 (i.e., direct emissions from our operations and indirect emissions related to energy usage at the site) GHG emissions over the last decade. We have an ambitious goal to achieve net-zero GHG emissions across our global operations by 2040, and our Climate Transition Action Plan provides the roadmap for how we will achieve these critically important goals.

Additionally, Intel meets regularly with our neighbors and other community stakeholders to share updates on Intel’s construction progress in Ohio, where to find our environmental reports and what to expect in the future.

Ohio Construction Update

Intel is investing more than $28 billion to construct two new leading-edge chip factories in Ohio creating 3,000 full time jobs and 7,000+ construction jobs, supporting tens of thousands of additional local long-term jobs across a broad ecosystem of suppliers. To learn more visit our Ohio fact sheet and updated drone footage of the Ohio One construction site, which has been under continuous construction since breaking ground in July 2022.

The project has completed over 2.2 million human work hours without a loss time incident with 900+ construction workers from 75 of Ohio’s 88 counties. And since announcing plans to build in Ohio, Intel’s Ohio supplier footprint has grown from approximately 150 to more than 350 Ohio suppliers across 47 Ohio counties.

Thank you, Ohio! While we have been building our Ohio One campus, you’ve been building opportunities with us through education initiatives, building resilient growth through supply chain and business partnerships and building greater prosperity through community engagement and volunteer opportunities. Together, we are building a brighter future for what is becoming the Silicon Heartland.

Pi Day with Johnstown at COSI

We extend our heartfelt thank you to Superintendent Wagner, Principal King, Johnstown City Council, Johnstown Chamber of Commerce and the students from Johnstown Monroe High School for celebrating Pi Day with us at a special field trip to COSI sponsored by Intel. Encouraging students to explore hands-on STEAM activities is part of Intel’s longstanding commitment to enabling the next generation of innovators.

It was a special treat for us to share the day and our love of math with the students from Johnstown. We have a long history of actively engaging in the schools where we operate and we’re proud to be doing that in Ohio. 

Fun fact: Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 because the date, abbreviated 3.14, is also the first three digits of pi, the mathematical constant that represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Intel colleagues across the world gather on pi day to recite the infinite digits of pi, talk to their friends about math, and eat pie.

Learn more about all of Intel’s investments in Ohio Education >

Eclipse

We are looking forward to the Ohio Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, where the moon will appear to totally obscure the sun. We don’t want to miss it because the next total solar eclipse in Ohio won’t occur until the year 2099! Thank you to the State and local elected leaders, parks and preserves, regional planning teams and first responders for creating safe viewing opportunities across the state.



Looking for a fun related activity for your kiddos? The Intel® Future Skills Lunar Lander project can be made with supplies from home. You can learn more about it in this lunar lander video.

Stay safe with proper eye protection and be sure to share your Ohio Total Solar Eclipse adventure with #OhioTheHeartofitAll and #Eclipse24. 

Intel in the Community

Thank you to Legacy U, Woodcrest Elementary, Licking Heights, Somerset Builder's Club, Junior Achievement and the many career and technical schools, community colleges and universities across Ohio that have invited us to visit. We’ve enjoyed building robots, exploring circuits and introducing technology and the semiconductor industry to students.

We celebrated International Women’s Month, International Women’s Day and U.S. Women’s History Month with internal events held at our Ohio One construction site along with events in the community including the New Albany Community Foundation’s speaker series featuring Misty Copeland, Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland State of the Girl and numerous Women of Achievement Celebrations.

Intel has a goal to double the number of women and underrepresented minorities in senior leadership roles. Through Intel’s RISE goals, we are focused on ensuring our workforce is reflective of the available talent in the market. To achieve this, we help foster a thriving community through meaningful connections, personal growth opportunities, and developing others to develop the next generation of leaders.

We extend our congratulations to Sandra Rodriguez Toledo and the team from Amgen for cutting the ribbon to their nearly 300,000 square-foot bio manufacturing facility. Amgen’s facility, located in the New Albany International Business Park will employee nearly 400 full-time people and will play an important role in helping address serious disease around the world with innovative biomedicines. We’re proud to be your neighbor!

Interested in Becoming an Intel Supplier?

Join Intel in Ohio