Due to the significant rise in environmental awareness of companies and customers for the past few years, research on how to optimize business with respect to carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission has gained more attention and importance. This paper investigates how flexibility can be an enabler for CO₂ reduction over a global production network especially in a capital intensive and high volatile market like the semiconductor one. We tested this hypothesis with discrete-event simulation experiments based on a case study obtained from a semiconductor company. The study indicates that global supply chains (SCs), like those in the semiconductor industry, should be equipped with a certain level of flexibility to cope with demand volatility if the CO₂ burden due to transportation is low compared to those due to manufacturing. This flexibility provides ecological benefits to companies in reducing the carbon footprint of their products.