Follow the Chipmaker: How AI and Demand-Side Pressure Are Forcing a New Climate-Driven Energy Playbook

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, announced in April that it will begin signing a new Greenhouse Gas Reduction, Emissions Elimination & Neutrality (GREEN) Agreement with its suppliers starting in 2025. This initiative requires suppliers, which account for roughly 90% of the company’s supply chain emissions, to meet ambitious renewable energy and decarbonization targets. This highlights the growing trends of green manufacturing and energy efficiency. The 2025 timeline for this initiative is based on the company’s official public announcements.

This move underscores a new dynamic in the global energy market: the demand side, driven by the massive AI energy demand in Asia, is now setting the agenda for the entire power sector.

A special report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in April 2025 supports this trend with new data. The report, titled “Energy and AI,” models that global data center electricity consumption will more than double to 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030, an amount greater than Japan’s total current electricity usage. The report explicitly highlights that this surge in demand will be driven primarily by the proliferation of AI and other data-intensive applications. The report’s findings are a key discussion point at the AI, Climate & Energy Summit Asia 2025 conference.

Crucially, the IEA’s analysis suggests that to meet this demand, policy and investment must shift to a more distributed energy model. The report notes that while renewables are expected to meet nearly half of the additional demand, new gas-fired and coal-fired generation will also be required. The IEA warns that without a proactive approach – including streamlined permitting and a focus on decentralized solutions – new data center projects could face significant delays due to overstretched grids. The insights from this report are central to discussions on sustainable data center solutions for Asia and AI-powered energy management solutions at the upcoming AI, Climate & Energy Summit Asia 2025.

TSMC’s new supplier mandate is a real-world example of this shift. By leveraging its market power, the company is effectively forcing its entire supply chain to become more sustainable. This follows similar commitments from other major technology companies, which are increasingly framing climate resilience not as a public relations strategy, but as a core business requirement. This new capital narrative is making climate-aligned investments the most attractive option, ensuring that the AI revolution and the clean energy transition move forward in tandem. These topics are crucial for Chief Sustainability Officers at Asia’s leading utilities and their largest offtakers as the AI infrastructure buildout gathers pace.

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Rex Sayson

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