WHAT THE CHIEFS SAY

Summer 2012

by Tony Graziano

Today’s leaders may sympathise with Kermit the Frog’s colour anxiety, as they struggle to find green solutions ensuring future growth and prosperity without depleting the planet’s resources to achieve it.

In the lead up to Sustainable Energy Week, we as innovation leaders are reflecting on what we are doing to meet the European Union’s 2020 energy targets – 20% less greenhouse gasses, 20% boost in energy efficiency and 20% increase in renewable energy.

As a major ICT-solutions provider with a global workforce of 146,000 in more than 150 countries, Huawei takes its responsibilities to the environment and low-carbon future seriously. We make end-to-end green communications our priority. We help telecom carriers and whole industries conserve energy and reduce emissions. We provide end-to-end green communications solutions to sustain environmental protection through our Green Base Station, Green Equipment Room, Green Transmission, and Green Energy solution. Having played a major role in building the current generation of telecom infrastructure in Europe, we have developed sound experience and knowledge of the energy sector and green ICTs.

Recognizing both the positive and potential negative environmental impacts the ICT industry can have, we at Huawei have embraced the responsibility to look closely at our own ‘sustainable energy’ performance as well. Huawei evaluates its environmental footprint – resource and energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste handling – as part of our wider environmental protection policy of ‘Green Communications, Green Huawei, Green World’.

We perform extensive life-cycle analyses (LCA) to improve designs and processes, including production, delivery, operations and recycling. We also follow a modern waste management regime, and 2%
treat electrical and electronic waste according to the EU directive and relevant national regulations. 97%
In 2011, Huawei recycled or reused 94% of the 7,403 tonnes of product and manufacturing waste we handled worldwide.
ICT companies like ours also have a responsibility to make green products and solutions to help our customers meet ‘their’ sustainable energy goals. For example, our SingleRAN for green base stations is optimised so telecom carriers need fewer housing cabinets and cooling facilities, which generate floor area savings of some 66% and energy conservation of nearly 50%.

Research has shown that carbon emissions occur mostly in products used for base stations in mobile networks and broadband access in fixed networks. So we introduced energy-saving features in base station operations, and our green broadband solutions are optimised to deal with heat problems typically found in these vast networks. In the next three years, our access network user ports will further cut energy consumption by 30% (700 million kWh) and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 5.9 million tonnes.

Huawei also favours desktop cloud solutions to save energy. Because data is stored on servers in the cloud data centre rather than individual PCs it can reduce power consumption by 73% and IT costs by 30%. Our desktop cloud is already boosting the operations of customers in over 30 countries with around 100,000 users in various sectors, including government, education and finance.  Obviously, we apply the technology as well – 45,000 of our engineers use virtual desktops as part of the world’s largest desktop cloud collaboration!

Furthermore, Huawei has set up an ISO-standardised greenhouse gas management mechanism to improve our overall sustainable energy and environmental performance. And last year, a team was assigned to the Carbon Disclosure Project, which is exploring ways to help major companies and investors worldwide address climate change.

All these measures show it is not easy being green … but Huawei firmly believes industry, especially the ICT sector, must do everything it can to change colour before it’s too late.  

Learn about the EU Sustainable Energy Week (20-22 June): http://eusew.eu

Tony Graziano is VP of Public Affairs & Communication in Huawei’s Brussels Office.