TSMC's latest sustainability report is good news for its workers, whose typical pay rose sharply, and a signal that the AI boom is forcing the chipmaker to spend more on cleaning up its power use.

• Median worldwide pay at TSMC climbed close to 20% in a year, to roughly NT$2.95 million.
• Total staff pay and benefits have doubled since 2020, and headcount is now over 91,000 after more than 9,000 new hires.
• Chairman C.C. Wei says AI brings huge opportunity but a hard shift to low-carbon power, and TSMC is putting more of its profit into that.
• Hiring is spreading beyond Taiwan into Japan, the US, Europe and Southeast Asia, though Taiwan, China, the US and Japan still make up almost all staff.
• Wei points to a landmark world court opinion making climate action a legal duty for countries, and says TSMC is now lining up with science-based absolute emission cuts.

Outlook: Expect TSMC to keep raising pay to hold onto talent while spending more on clean power as AI chip demand pushes its electricity use higher.