Press Release
[Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2024] Huawei hosts the Green Development Elite Club during MWC Barcelona 2024. More than 90 delegates from UNFCCC, ITU-T, and leading network operators such as Turkey Turkcell and Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) gathered together to discuss the latest developments in the building of Green Target Networks to further enable the sustainable development of the industry.
In the intelligent era, global network operators should not only fulfill the social responsibility of reducing their own carbon emissions, but also seek to help wider industry with energy conservation and efficiency improvement. Now, with the advent of enhanced computing power and artificial intelligence, network operators can not only transform their own operations to reduce carbon footprint but also enable many new 2H and 2B services to help wider society also lower its carbon footprint.
Opportunities and Challenges for the Green Development of the ICT Industry
In his opening presentation, Mr. Massamba Thioye, Project Executive of UNFCCC-GIH (UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub), explained how the GIH organizes global industry partners to actively participate in and disseminate global thought leadership on “systemic innovation to enable green development”. Through multilateral collaboration with standards organizations, network operators, and equipment vendors from the ICT industry they hope to make breakthroughs in green innovation initiatives and green operation methods, and share best practices to support the sustainable development of humankind.
Next, Ms. Qi Shuguang, Vice Chair of ITU-T SG5 (International Telecommunications Union Study Group 5: Environment, climate change and circular economy), Vice Chief Engineer of CTTL-system in CAICT, outlined the standardization work of Sustainable Digital Transformation which is focusing on Double-Edge Nature of ICTs. On the one hand, how to minimize the negative effect of ICT, including published Recommendations on circular economy, digital product sustainable passport, sustainable data centers, smart energy solutions, Climate Actions towards Net Zero, scope3 emissions and ongoing work related to environmental impacts assessment etc. On the other hand, due to huge potential of ICT to slash global GHG emissions , Ms. Qi briefly introduced the content of ITU-L. 1480 which is on assessment of enablement effect of ICT as well as under developing standard titled“Enablement indicator of ICT to other sectors and best practices to achieve Net Zero goal”. Finally, she mentioned the collaboration between ITU and other UN organization such as UNFCCC, UNEP, ETSI on standardization work of Sustainable Digital Transformation.
Green Development Practices of Global Leading Operators
Mr. Yildiray Ornekli, Access network infrastructure associate director of the Türkiye Turkcell, was the first of two network operators presenting, sharing their green site solution. With simplified site redesign and extensive solar energy utilization, their Green Site Solution is more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, and as a side-effect, its cyber resilience is improved. Even during the major earthquake of 2023, the solution provided stable and reliable communication services to the impacted areas. Turkcell will continue to build 5,000+ green sites and 300 MW solar power plant in the future to rapidly improve wireless network coverage, introduce connectivity to unconnected areas, and help more people bridge the digital divide.
Next, Mr. Derek Chen, Engineering Operations VP at HKT, shared HKT’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2050 and provided details of their green management system. HKT’s equipment room modernization program together with AI-driven power source scheduling has already greatly improved energy efficiency and operational efficiency. Now, 80% of their equipment rooms are equipped with intelligent power-saving meter systems, saving 31.8 GWh of power and reducing carbon emissions by 10% annually. HKT also provides various green services for communities and enterprises, including smart property management, cloud computing, generative AI services, telemedicine, and marine environment monitoring. Together, these are promoting green and sustainable social development.
Beyond Imagination，Digit Create Green Future
In the closing presentation, Zhou Yu, president of Huawei Network Consulting and System Integration, announced the release of two white papers which aim to stimulate and drive increased sustainability in both telecommunications operators, and the wider industry. The first white paper, “Green Management”, co-authored by China Mobile, Hong Kong Telecom and Huawei, proposes a management and governance framework to help network operators successfully transform to more sustainable operations. The second white paper “Green Network Evolution with Digital-Twins” introduces Huawei’s Green Network Evolution with the Digital Twin Platform (GNED), a transformative tool to helps carriers accelerate green transformation.
Mr. Zhou Yu concluded by emphasizing that with the rapid development of computing and AI capabilities, operators can provide more innovative 2C, 2H, 2B and computing services. However, this leads to faster network expansion and rapid growth of operation costs. The network is gradually going beyond the limits of “Moore’s Law.” and exceed the control of the “man”. Huawei is committed to helping operators integrate green and intelligence into networks through new digital and AI technologies, and enabling the promotion of organizations, talents, and processes, to support the evolution of network architecture from “Pyramid” to “Spindle”, achieving continuous growth of network capabilities without increasing energy consumption – Beyond Imagination.
To enable this transformation, Huawei has built many end-to-end digital capabilities based on its NetLIVE platform, such as Full-service Area Planning, Smooth and Resilience Migration and Continuous Operation. It provides operators with a comprehensive set of scenarios solutions such as Green Site Modernization, Green CO Modernization and Solar Farm etc. – Digit Create Green Future.
In the future, Huawei’s Intelligent Connectivity Integration service will build on the concept of “Less for More” – less resource for more end-services – and focus on a holistic network-wide view rather than single sites in isolation. Huawei’s digital and AI capabilities will continue to build ever more green, efficient, resilient, secure and service-rich networks for operators, and is committed to achieving the strategic goals of green and sustainable development.