Ms. Chen Zhiping, Vice President of ZTE: A Digital Road to Carbon Neutrality

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28 Oct, 2021, 14:30 GMT

SHENZHEN, China, Oct. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile internet, today announced that Ms. Chen Zhiping, Vice President and General Manager of the Branding Department at ZTE, has delivered a keynote speech entitled "A Digital Road to Carbon Neutrality" and shared how ZTE can help companies in multiple industries to save energy, reduce emissions and finally promote the realization of society's goal of carbon neutrality through ZTE's digital technology innovation.

"To meet the goals and challenges of energy saving and emission reduction in the whole industry, we believe that digitalization will help traditional industries," said Ms. Chen.

As a driver of the digital economy, ZTE uses technological innovation to pave the green boulevard for the digital economy, and promotes the achievement of the dual-carbon goal through green operations, green supply chains, green ICT Infrastructure, and green industry.

The following is a compilation of Ms. Chen's speech:

In 2020, apart from COVID-19 spreading around the world, did you feel that the temperature is a bit unusual? In June 2020, a Siberian town in the Arctic Circle reached a high temperature of 38 degrees! This is the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic circle. If the global temperature rise is controlled within 1.5 degrees, a large number of losses and risks caused by climate change will be avoided.

Currently, carbon neutrality has become a global consensus.

By June 2021, 137 countries have proposed a carbon neutralization target and more than 1200 enterprises have committed to join SBTi, with global ICT giants taking the lead in setting strategic zero carbon objectives. China has announced carbon emission commitments and targets.

Digital technology plays a key role in achieving the goal of carbon neutrality

If we want to achieve the goal of global carbon neutrality, traditional industries are facing a greater challenge of reducing consumption. The ICT industry accounts for 2% of total carbon emissions in the world every year. With the growth of digital infrastructure deployment, ICT emission reduction also faces considerable challenges. The ITU (International Telecommunication Union) announced that the ICT industry would reduce emissions by 45% by 2030.

With the acceleration of digital transformation, the technologies represented by 5G, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence have been continuously improved, and digital technologies are more widely used in all walks of life.

We can improve the efficiency of resource allocation and production and life through efficient data connections, storage, calculations and applications. Many research data show that digital technology can help other industries reduce carbon emissions by more than 10 times compared to the ICT industry's own carbon emissions. It can be seen that digital technology plays a key role in achieving the goal of carbon neutrality.

Set as an example, ZTE takes a green development path in digital transformation

As a positive practitioner of green development, ZTE promotes environmental protection management in the office and production operations to reduce the consumption of natural resources.

The company has taken a variety of measures to reduce corporate carbon emissions, such as pursuing green production, and conserving resources and energy through continuous transformation of production processes.

Through production process optimization (high temperature aging), annual power saving exceeds 30 million kWh. We started carbon footprint tracking management of the whole product life cycle. We promote smart air conditioners and smart lighting to reduce electricity consumption while ensuring a comfortable working environment for employees. Through green photovoltaic power generation, annual electricity output has exceeded 3 million kWh. In addition, the company works with more than 160 global environmental service providers to build a global green cycle network.

Our carbon target also depends on the decarbonization process of upstream products and services. We are working together with upstream and downstream partners to jointly achieve energy saving and emission reduction in material selection, material recycling, and logistics.

So far, more than 40 leading suppliers have developed carbon reduction strategic plans. Most suppliers will come from partners with targeted commitments in the next 5 to 10 years. Procurement management actively promotes carbon emissions of suppliers in many ways. It continuously improves low-carbon and sustainable development competitiveness of our supply chain.

Green digital infrastructure helps operators build low-carbon networks

For digital infrastructure, wireless sites and data centers occupy the largest proportion of energy consumption. Carbon emissions can be reduced by introducing green power, building green sites, and green data centers.

Specifically, in the process of building the energy infrastructure of the communication network, ZTE has proposed a new "zero-carbon" energy network with the concept of "green, efficient, intelligent and reliable" to increase the proportion of green energy applications.

With the annual increase of communication traffic and the large-scale deployment of 5G, the proportion of site energy consumption to the energy consumption of the whole network exceeds 45%, which is the key to reduce emissions.

As a leading ICT equipment supplier, ZTE Corporation has incorporated the concept of low-carbon and environmental protection into the design of site products and the implementation of solutions to continuously output value for the creation of green sites.

With the development of various data services and cloud services, data centers are also giants of energy consumption, including IT equipment, cooling equipment, power supply and distribution systems and lighting equipment with the IT equipment and cooling equipment alone accounting for 80% of energy consumption. Equipped with ZTE's ZEGO solution, it can solve the problem of equipment energy consumption.

At present, the UniSite, PowerPilot, and iEnergy solutions proposed by ZTE through digital practice have been widely used in the networks of global operators, helping them to achieve energy saving and consumption reduction.

In Spain, ZTE deployed the UniSite+ solution, which is the simplest site solution in the current industry. It reduces radio units by 60% and saves power consumption by 30% compared with traditional solutions.
In Malaysia, the PowerPilot AI energy saving solution was successfully launched, saving 7 million kWh of power annually.
In partnership with its clients, ZTE built Asia's largest micro-module intelligent data center in Shenzhen's Pingshan District with power saving exceeding 60 million kWh each year.

Together with customers and partners empowering multiple industries to save energy and reduce emissions

Over the past two years, ZTE has been collaborating with operators and industry-leading companies to explore green and energy-saving application scenarios in various industries and extract innovative applications that can be replicated on a large scale.

To introduce green energy, the China Southern Power Grid, together with China Mobile and ZTE, built the largest demonstration zone for a 5G smart grid in China in Nansha District, Guangzhou. Services greatly reduce the impact of new energy access on the power grid. The reliability of renewable energy transmission will be increased four times in the future.
In the energy-intensive smelting industry, ZTE and Aluminum Corporation of China successfully explored 5G applications, saving more than 90 million kWh of electricity each year.
For the transportation industry, ZTE and Guangzhou Mobile released the world's first 5G smart transportation demonstration city, including smart high-speed rail, smart subway, 5G bus dispatching line, 5G intelligent network linkage, and 5G road policy inspection. The overall dispatching efficiency is increased by 10%.

Additionally, in the manufacturing industry, ZTE built a global 5G smart factory in Binjiang, Nanjing, which is a demonstration factory for "Intelligent Manufacturing Powered by 5G". It can reduce energy consumption by 40%, creating a demonstration sample of energy saving and emission reduction for advanced manufacturing.

Currently, ZTE and its partners continue to extensively carry out 5G+ innovative green practices, and have implemented more than 60 demonstration projects worldwide.

ZTE actively implements the carbon neutralization strategy, promotes energy saving and emission reduction in enterprise production and operation, helps operators in building end-to-end green low carbon networks, and actively empowers vertical industries to achieve energy saving and emission reduction. By far, ZTE has deployed more than 500 green 5G innovation patents, increasing efficiency and reducing consumption by technological innovation, and building green networks.

In the future, ZTE will continue to research new energy, new materials, and new components to make breakthroughs in key technologies, laying a solid technical foundation for the Green ICT Infrastructure, and enhancing the depth and breadth of digital technologies for traditional high-energy industries. In addition, ZTE will contribute to improving efficiency, saving energy, and reducing consumption in various industries, and helping to achieve the carbon neutralization goals of the whole society.

Achieving the goal of carbon neutrality requires a long-term process and the joint efforts of all sectors of the industry. ZTE, in collaboration with global partners, has been committed to building a green digital boulevard with ICT technology innovations for a promising future.

Media Contacts:
Margaret Ma
ZTE Corporation
Tel: +86 755 26775189
Email: ma.gaili@zte.com.cn