Corporate Environmental Report

Products and technologies

Accelerate efforts to design products for decreased energy consumption, and for enablement of more efficient applications, to reduce energy consumed during operations by a factor of more than ten by the year 2,000.

As a broad range semiconductor manufacturer, ST recognizes its responsibility towards Design for Environment. The constant aim is to manufacture products that are inherently less power-hungry and/or which enhance energy efficiency during their application.

The Company's products already contribute directly to a cleaner environment - from the transformation of energy in the automotive sector to the optimization of lighting systems and other consumer applications.

In the automotive sector, for instance, ST produces ICs essential for such applications as engine control, electronic fuel injection, ignition, airbags, electronic power steering, ABS, to name a few.

NEW Design products for decreased energy consumption and for enablement of more energy efficient applications.

Electronically driven valves, powered by ST devices will soon replace mechanical functionality. And thanks to the Company's smart power and embedded Flash technologies, ST is developing whole electronic systems for engine optimization - significantly contributing to pollution reduction.

Primarily with its Japanese partners, ST is taking an active role in the concept of a hybrid car with an electrical and thermal engine. The new hybrid car from a leading automobile manufacturer, currently available in Japan, and available elsewhere this year, has many ST components specifically designed for this model.

	In the lighting sector, the use of dedicated ICs has brought energy savings of 20% compared to traditional lamps. It has been estimated that over the last five years the use of latest generation lamps has saved 37 TWh (an average family uses 2500 KWh per year).
	ST's power and power switching ICs for supply control have resulted in savings of more than 70% and as high as 95% in consumer applications such as television and audio, among others. In the field of audio applications, amplification through pulse modulation (Class D) is fast becoming the norm and during the year 2000 will bring savings of some 77 GWh.

NEW Contribute to global environmental control by establishing a database of Life Cycle Assessment of our products.

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT (LCA)

The LCA is a process which evaluates the environmental burdens associated with a product. This is done by identifying the energy and materials used and the wastes released to the environment so that improvement can be made.

The assessment covers the entire life cycle of the product.

At ST, major efforts were dedicated to an important step of this process, termed Life Cycle Inventory (LCI). This is an objective data-based process of quantifying all relevant mass and energy input and output flows in the manufacturing of our products - including air emissions, water effluents, solid wastes and other releases to the environment.

In 1999 this exercise was performed both for ST's front-end wafer fabs and back-end test and assembly operations. The final report was supplied to six of our key customers who are performing a complete LCA study for their products.

We will continue to perform Life Cycle Inventories to enable us to establish a database for the evaluation of the Life Cycle Assessment of our products (two representative studies have already been performed). We will continue to provide this information when customers so demand to allow the Life Cycle Assessment of the final product to be made.