China’s tech giants are lagging. Of its 15 cloud that is leading and data centre companies, only the Chindata Group has made any commitment to shift to 100% renewables, according to another report by Greenpeace and North China Electric Power University, published in September 2019. And very few have a target for carbon emissions.
China’s new climate targets may spur change. At a data that is recent industry meeting, Alibaba tech expert Cheng Ming said carbon neutrality signalled a major shift in global development and will be essential to developing data centres sustainably. The Chindata Group made its commitment – to 100% renewable energy in its domestic operations by 2030 – in December year that is last. It also committed to progress that is making carbon neutrality, with investment in at least 2 gigawatts of clean power. Tencent’s announcement soon followed.
AI and coal: a move that is dumb
Technology can be a positive or force that is negative. A move it said put profits over climate in May 2020, Greenpeace published a report criticising Amazon, Google and Microsoft for providing artificial intelligence services to the oil and gas industry. The report examined 14 digital services contracts signed between the tech firms and fuel that is fossil. It found their technology in use across the production chain, from extraction and prospecting to refining and transportation. Responding to the report, Google immediately stopped building customised tools that are AI the oil and gas sector. Microsoft and Amazon failed to respond.
The tencent announcement stated: “AI can help improve thermal [fossil fuel] power plants” by providing “real-time and standards-compliant solutions for the use of materials and personnel” in a similar vein. The company is working with partners in Europe on creating smart power that is thermal, it added.
Enabling carbon neutrality across the value chain
Before helping other sectors reduce their carbon emissions, tech firms should use their platforms to promote carbon neutrality and the use of renewable energy across their value chain.
The approach taken by the tech that is international can serve as a reference. Three-quarters of Apple’s emissions come from manufacturing, so year that is last set itself a new target: carbon neutrality in every stage of its supply chain by 2030, including extraction of raw materials for its mobile phones, manufacturing, logistics and transportation, and recycling.
Apple pushed 77 suppliers to commit solely to energy that is renewable the manufacture of the company’s products, with many Chinese firms among them. In 2018, Apple and 10 suppliers that are chinese up the China Clean Energy Fund with $300 million to develop 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity. By 2020, the project had funded 134 megawatts of wind power in Hunan.
Similarly, Google has committed to investing in 5 gigawatts of renewable energy worldwide to manufacture its products. Microsoft has said that from 2021 it will change its procurement processes to consider carbon reduction explicitly july.
Tech giants have both the ability and a duty to promote emissions cuts from the activity that is economic platforms enable.
Decarbonisation will become even more crucial as the economy that is digital. Research shows that emissions from the ICT sector in a scenario that is business-as-usual increase from the equivalent of 1-1.6% of 2016 global emissions in 2007 to 14% in 2040, across consumer devices, data centres and communications networks. This is equivalent to more than half of current transportation sector emissions. In 2020, a strategy that is digital from the European Commission said the EU’s ICT sector should and could be carbon neutral by 2030.
One difference between China’s internet giants and their counterparts that are overseas the greater role of platform services. The “platform revolution” has transformed industries online and on the ground in China, supporting huge amounts of offline activity, such as in food and retail delivery, and spurring massive global flows of products.
The climate cost of China’s digital infrastructure rush
We need to look at the boundaries of corporate responsibility that is social the firms providing those platforms because carbon neutrality in their operations and supply chains may be inadequate. The tech giants have both the ability and a duty to promote emissions cuts from the economic activity their platforms enable as the greatest beneficiaries of the platform economy. This could be by, for example, ensuring the products sold are not associated with deforestation or damage that is environmental reducing the amount of plastic used in packaging.
On 20 January, Joe Biden became president of the United States and announced the country’s return to the Paris Agreement and a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. The tech sector’s move towards carbon neutrality is inevitable with China, the US and the EU working together on global climate governance. How China’s internet firms can build on emissions reductions in their operations by using their power to achieve carbon neutrality across their industries will be vital to the national country’s response to climate change.
Tencent owns the messaging that is hugely popular WeChat and is in the vanguard of China’s net-zero shift, although it is still a late mover compared to similar firms overseas. It has not detailed the scale of its ambitions yet, but it will need to follow up quickly with an action plan and targets, including 100% renewable energy use by 2030.
There is great potential for Chinese tech companies to contribute to decarbonisation. They should make emissions that are real in their operations and supply chains; use their platforms’ strengths to drive emissions cuts throughout the business world; and apply their technology to help achieve a zero-emissions society.
100% renewable energy is key
Tencent’s announcement emphasised novel that is several technologies, including recycling waste heat at its Tianjin data centre, and using liquid cooling technology to bring power usage effectiveness (PUE) down to 1.06 in its data centre in Qingyuan, Guangdong.
What is PUE?
Data centres have been described as “electricity tigers” for their power that is vast consumption. In 2018, China’s data centres used 160.9 billion kilowatt-hours – 2% of the country’s total, and more than the city of Shanghai in the year that is same according to a report by Greenpeace and North China Electric Power University. Assuming China’s energy mix does not change, Chinese data centres’ electricity use will create 163 million tonnes of carbon emissions in 2023, equivalent to a nation that is mid-sized.
Tech giants already use energy-saving methods to minimise their costs that are running but improvements in PUE have stalled. Indeed, a survey that is global of IT managers carried out by the Uptime Institute in 2019 revealed that large data centres’ energy efficiency improvements might even be reversing. After improving 30% between 2007 and 2013, annual averages have since hovered around 1.65.
The graph shows average PUE that is annual the largest data centre of 624 IT companies. A lower value indicates higher efficiency. Source: Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey of IT and Data Center Managers, 2019
A perfect PUE score of 1 may still result in significant carbon emissions unless companies use renewable energy sources despite improvements in energy efficiency. In 2019, power consumption in data centres accounted for 87% of Tencent’s carbon emissions.
Tencent CEO Pony Ma acknowledged the importance of renewables to achieving emissions reductions in a WeChat comment on his company’s carbon neutrality announcement: “I expect the part that is biggest in the future will be powering data centres with clean renewables. It’ll be tough, but we’re going to work hard.”
Many tech that is international have adopted a 100% renewables target: 41 have set it as a long-term goal; 20% of those, including Apple and Google, are already there; and 50% are due to get there by 2030.
Last year Amazon bought 35 wind and power that is solar, with a total generation capacity of over 4 gigawatts, making it the biggest corporate buyer of renewables. Google announced that by 2030 it would achieve decarbonisation that is“real-time” of operations, with zero emissions every hour, rather than every year. Microsoft has said its carbon emissions will turn negative by 2030, and that it will remove its emissions that are historical 2050.