Back to NGA WebinarsRecorded Webinar: “2026 Industry Priorities in Water Circularity”
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- Amanda Tarp, FTD — Session 4 of the Semiconductor Water Innovation Series introduces the 2026 industry priorities for water circularity in semiconductor manufacturing. The session outlines how the IRDS Environmental Sustainability for Semiconductor Facilities (ESSF) framework identifies emerging sustainability constraints and how NGA builds on those insights to accelerate practical innovation. The goal is to explain the relationship between IRDS road mapping and the NGA process that helps move new water technologies toward industry adoption.
- Dr. Slava Libman, FTD — The Next Generation Alliance (NGA) is presented as a collaborative platform designed to accelerate innovation in semiconductor water management. Slava explains that as semiconductor devices become more complex, facility water systems must evolve in parallel. NGA brings together facility experts, technology integrators, and OEM stakeholders to define unmet needs, share information transparently, and guide solution providers toward technologies that can address the industry’s future water challenges.
- Marina Cameron, FTD — The IRDS Environmental Sustainability for Semiconductor Facilities (ESSF) effort focuses on identifying technology gaps and sustainability risks early enough to avoid limiting industry growth. Marina explains how representative semiconductor facility models are used to evaluate water flows, chemistry balances, and treatment infrastructure across multiple climate scenarios. This modeling helps identify the most pressing water circularity challenges before they become constraints on semiconductor manufacturing scale.
- Lior Eshed, FTD — Innovation in semiconductor water systems often takes 10–15 years to reach broad adoption because fabs validate technologies independently with different criteria and risk tolerance. Lior explains that NGA addresses this fragmentation by establishing shared problem definitions, evaluation criteria, and validation pathways. He then outlines NGA’s 2026 focus areas, including tool environmental footprint reduction, ultra-pure water recycling, resilient biological wastewater treatment, and holistic water management across entire fab sites.
- Andreas Neuber, FTD — Andreas explains the complementary roles of IRDS and NGA. IRDS provides a long-term strategic roadmap identifying sustainability challenges across a 15-year horizon, while NGA focuses on tactical acceleration of solutions addressing the most immediate unmet needs. Using UPW recycling as an example, he describes how NGA evaluates wastewater streams, treatment technologies, operating conditions, and risk factors to develop safe and scalable recycling pathways.
- Q&A — The discussion reinforces several key themes: the importance of structured technology validation to reduce adoption risk, how IRDS challenge areas are identified through representative fab modeling, and why semiconductor water strategies must consider the water–energy–chemical nexus. Collaboration across industry stakeholders enables NGA to accelerate the transition from technology concepts to deployable solutions.
- Andreas Neuber, FTD — The session concludes with an invitation for participants to complete a short survey to guide future NGA activities. The next webinar will focus specifically on UPW recycling and the associated NGA white paper, continuing the exploration of practical pathways for semiconductor water circularity.