Image Source: Visual China

BEIJING, April 27 (TMTPOST) —Chinese telecom giant Huawei released itsGreen Development 2030 Reporton Wednesday at its Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2022 held in Shenzhen, outlining how green development can be empowered with green ICT (information and communication technologies).

The report describes how digitalization and decarbonization can drive green development, as well as potential applications of green ICT in key industries by 2030. It outlines six outlooks in green development and green ICT, including the trend for renewable energy to go mainstream and how buildings and transportation will become greener in the future.

The report also explains the three main pathways that future ICT innovation should pursue to empower green development: improving the energy efficiency of digital infrastructure, increasing the share of renewables in electricity generation, and enabling green industries. This will provide insights into green development efforts worldwide.

Huawei has been investing in the digital energy industry for over 30 years, acting as an innovator and practitioner of green energy, Karl Song, Vice President of Corporate Communications said.

The increasingly serious global energy shortage has made solar energy an appealing energy source. Huawei has been building its capacity in solar energy since 2012, setting up a plant in Dongguan and research centers in Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing, according to Song. The company has built distributive solar power plants with a volume of 19.5 MW. Huawei’s Nanfang Plant’s power station can generate over 17 million kWh a year, which equals around 10% of the electricity demand of the Nanfang Plant, saving over 18 million yuan a year.

Kevin Zhang, CMO of Huawei's ICT Infrastructure Business, explained in his keynote speech how digital technologies can help to reduce carbon emissions and empower businesses to go green.

In his speech, Zhang explained with detailed examples from Huawei about how cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence can drastically improve energy efficiency by optimizing operation and how innovative measures can be adopted to reduce energy use. For instance, Huawei’s data center in Gui’an can cool itself using water from the lake, significantly reducing energy consumption.

The forum was attended by a number of industry representatives from the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), China Mobile, State Grid Yancheng Power Supply Company, BYD, etc. They spoke on their organizations' own roadmaps and best practices for empowering green development with digital technologies.

"ICT has the potential to enable a 20% reduction of global CO2 emissions by 2030, hold emissions at 2015 levels, and effectively decouple economic growth from emissions growth. This means that the impact of ICT solutions is nearly 10 times higher than ICT’s expected footprint in 2030,” GeSI CEO Luis Neves said.

"An assessment of eight economic sectors – mobility & logistics, manufacturing, food, buildings, energy, work & business, health and learning – shows also that ICT could generate over $11 trillion in economic benefits per year by 2030, the equivalent of China’s expected annual GDP in 2015," Neves said.