  Taiwan plans to rapidly increase its industrial production capacity of
electronic components while concurrently setting policies for its ecological
transition. Given that the island is responsible for the manufacturing of a
significant part of worldwide electronics components, the sustainability of the
Taiwanese electronics industry is therefore of critical interest. In this
paper, we survey the environmental footprint of 16 Taiwanese electronic
components manufacturers (ECM) using corporate sustainability responsibility
reports (CSR). Based on data from 2015 to 2020, this study finds out that our
sample of 16 manufacturers increased its greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions by
7.5\% per year, its final energy and electricity consumption by 8.8\% and
8.9\%, and the water usage by 6.1\%. We show that the volume of manufactured
electronic components and the environmental footprints compiled in this study
are strongly correlated, which suggests that relative efficiency gains are not
sufficient to curb the environmental footprint at the national scale. Given the
critical nature of electronics industry for Taiwan's geopolitics and economics,
the observed increase of energy consumption and the slow renewable energy
roll-out, these industrial activities could create a carbon lock-in, blocking
the Taiwanese government from achieving its carbon reduction goals and its
sustainability policies. Besides, the European Union, the USA or even China aim
at developing an industrial ecosystem targeting sub-10nm CMOS technology nodes
similar to Taiwan. This study thus provides important insights regarding the
environmental implications associated with such a technology roadmap. All data
and calculation models used in this study are provided as supplementary
material.
