Green Recovery in Asia: Every Step with Technology Matters

On January 19, I had the honor of speaking at the following webinar: ELEVATE Strategic Partner webinar – A green recovery in Asia: Opportunities for concerted action. The event convened experts and decision makers to discuss priorities for post COVID-19 green recovery in Asia, highlighting opportunities for the joint efforts of governments, businesses, and society to rebuild and transform economies and to confront the climate crisis.

In this post, I’ve included the main ideas of my speech.

I would like to start by sharing three numbers with you.

55

This is the number of grams we have been able to remove from the packaging used for each Huawei Mate series of phone. With 10 million of these phones, it means we used 350 tons less paper, saving 9,350 full-grown trees.

16

This is the number of racks our unique data center cooling solution needs to achieve the same amount of computing power as traditional air-cooling solutions produce with 86 racks. Each of these racks guzzles electricity, so by reducing the number of racks needed for AI and computing down to 16, we can now reduce overall power consumption by 60%.

6 million

This is the amount of energy, in kilowatt hours, generated in a single day by the Baofeng photovoltaic plant in Ningxia, the world’s largest PV plant for agriculture. Together, adaptive solar panels and our smart PV solution are converting sunlight into energy while also sheltering 7 square kilometers of goji berries for local farmers who can now reclaim this once-barren land.

These are not just numbers to us. The reductions in carbon emissions, the electricity savings, and the amount of solar power generated: all reflect our commitment to environmental protection and combatting climate change. They are the result of the relentless effort put in by our engineers and scientists and are a testament to the technological progress we have made. We firmly believe that technology must be used for the good of the planet, our one and only home.

As we take our first steps into 2021, Huawei will remain committed to reducing our carbon emissions, pursuing new renewable energy resources, and supporting a circular economy.

Through initiatives both big and small, we have spent years embedding circular initiatives into our business/ and will continue to do so for years to come. Since 2013, we have used plant and other biologically derived materials in a wide variety of our products. The use of bio-based plastics alone has helped Huawei reduce/ our carbon dioxide emissions by 612 tons in 2018 alone.

There are many such actions and initiatives we take/ solely to protect the environment. Huawei’s green ICT solutions are designed to drive energy conservation and emissions reduction in multiple industries. We are committed to developing 5G products/ that take up less space and consume less energy. We are working on more efficient and user-friendly cloud and AI technologies/ with partners from other industries/ to empower those same industries/ to create more environment-friendly products and solutions.

Tackling climate change will continue to be one of the most daunting tasks of our life time. The recent Climate Ambition Summit 2020 and the upcoming Glasgow Climate Change Conference are just some of the many events held to discuss what we can expect in the near future. Even in the ELEVATE webinar on green recovery, we can see that an increasing number of governments, businesses, and people are choosing to take more active roles in this endeavor.

I am fully confident in not only our ability to drive technology forward, but also in the global community’s ability and determination to build a harmonious relationship with nature. There is an old Chinese saying that roughly translates as, “Do not cease to do good things, no matter how seemingly insignificant they may be.” At Huawei, we trust that every bit of technological progress we make means another step forward for green innovation. We must think big, and act small.

I ask everyone to remember that every country, organization, and person must start small and join hands, so that together we can build a green, innovative, inclusive, and beautiful world.

Further Reading

• How Eliminating Inequality Can Protect the Planet [Article]
• Protecting the Palawan Rainforest in the Philippines [Video & Article]

Disclaimer: Any views and/or opinions expressed in this post by individual authors or contributors are their personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Huawei Technologies.