Huawei Day0 Forum: The Push Towards Green in the Age of Digitalisation

Extra tags: Digital TransformationAI5G

As a leader in the technology sphere, Huawei has been at the forefront of innovation for many years. And true to its vision, Huawei is now among the tech titans spearheading global digitalisation, advancing technologies such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence and cloud computing but ushering in green development initiatives at the same time.

These advancements and initiatives were the highlights of the “Huawei Day0 Forum,” held at the W Hotel in Barcelona, Spain on the 27th of February 2022 and graced by Huawei executives and leaders of various other organisations across the globe. The Forum was a fitting prelude to “Mobile World Congress 2022” (MWC22) Barcelona, a globally influential event for the connectivity industry that got underway a day later.

Transforming Digitally, Ensuring Sustainability

While the “Huawei Day0 Forum” highlighted the massive role of 5G and other technological advancements in global digitalisation, the need for sustainability nonetheless emerged as the overarching theme throughout the event—discussed in detail by the expert speakers throughout the Forum.

Jeroen Cox, Strategic Lead, Energy and Environment, at KPN, highlighted in his keynote, “Every Day, a Little Greener,” how the Dutch telco company is going green, little by little, with an ambitious goal of having net-zero emissions by 2040. The process is protracted but KPN is making great progress, having achieved, for example, 100% green energy in 2011 and becoming carbon neutral in its operations since as early as 2015.

Amazingly, KPN’s data usage—traditionally energy-intensive—has increased 24-fold since 2010 but the company’s energy consumption has gone down by an unheard of 45% during the same timeframe. According to Cox, KPN was able to accomplish this by “modernising and simplifying the network, switching from copper to optic fibre, virtualisation, reducing office space and transforming our fleet.” But KPN is not stopping there.

Nevertheless, The Netherlands-based brand, as Cox pointed out, will need all the help it can get, including from both relevant stakeholders and KPN’s customers themselves. Cox emphasised, “We cannot do this on our own. We need value from our partners and also our customers, and we have to improve our impact on sustainability together.”
Improving this impact, though, is not all about reductions, Cox clarified. While companies do need to minimise the negative effects of their operations, like carbon dioxide emissions, they must also increase the positive impact they are making on the environment—something that digitisation can help accomplish in various sectors. And KPN is doing exactly that with precision farming, automated guided vehicles, connected cars and smart manufacturing.

Cox ended his keynote by reaffirming KPN’s commitment to sustainability, saying, “Our purpose is to go all-out for a sustainable future, and we’ll do so by embedding sustainability in our strategy and in our organisation. We’ll continue to decrease energy usage. We’re committed to a circular economy and to becoming net-zero by 2040. And we aim to introduce more and more digital services and innovation, which will help in sustainability.”

But, again, Cox reemphasised that teamwork and working together towards a more sustainable future is everyone’s responsibility.

“Like I said before, we cannot do it on our own,” Cox concluded. “We need you, our suppliers and our customers to help us, to play an important role across the whole value chain to help us reach this ambitious agenda.”

Lighting Up the Future

Ryan Ding, Executive Director and President of the Carrier BG at Huawei, formally kicked off the forum with his keynote, "Lighting Up the Future," where he highlighted the rapidly developing digital economy, with 50% of the global GDP (Global Domestic Product) to be digitalised by 2022. It is for this reason, Ding explained, that “many regions and countries, like the EU, Japan, China and South Korea, have announced huge investment plans for the digital economy.”

More than that, Ding also noted how “operators, such as ICT infrastructure providers, provide the cornerstone of the future digital economy,” whose vitality can be measured using these three factors: connection density, computing diversity and carbon reduction intensity.

Operators aiming to grow their 5G reach and expand their core business should then look to increase their connection density. They must also diversify their computing resources to take the lead in facilitating useful interplays between IT and connectivity to foster digitalisation at the enterprise level. While doing these, however, operators must not forget their responsibility towards ensuring sustainability, which they can meet via carbon reduction initiatives, like using green ICT solutions and minimising energy consumption as much as possible.

Beyond increasing connection density, diversifying computing resources and adopting green technologies, Ding also suggested operators to follow Huawei's GUIDE business blueprint, so they can expand their services, innovate their offerings, leverage available resources, compete on value and contribute to society in general.

Towards a Greener Future

Nevertheless, before sustainability can truly be a staple in the ICT industry, relevant stakeholders will have to move past common misconceptions, according to Dr Philip Song, Chief Marketing Officer at Huawei Carrier BG, in his keynote.

"Green development is a buzzword. Just like from Newton's classical mechanics to Einstein's theory of relativity, its development is going to be marked by a spiralling path between misconceptions and truths,” Dr Song pointed out. “We need to move past these five misconceptions as soon as possible to accelerate the green development of the ICT industry."

Five of these misconceptions, as outlined by Dr Song, are as follows:

1. The ICT industry is a big contributor to increasing carbon emissions. But the truth is, by 2030, the industry will have contributed only 1.97% of all global carbon emissions. Not only is the ICT industry responsible for a minuscule amount of carbon emissions; it is also going to be used by organisations in other industries to reduce their carbon footprint by 20%.

2. Supply chain emissions related to network equipment is the largest contributor to carbon emissions. According to Dr Song, however, just 2% of the carbon emissions of network equipment is due to manufacturing, with 80–95% generated during actual use. As such, the focus must be on using energy efficiently.

3. Green development is only about green energy. There are other aspects to green development apart from leveraging green energy. Enhancing telecom networks’ energy efficiency, for instance, can help considerably in ensuring sustainability. Huawei’s three-layer "Green Site, Green Network and Green Operation" solution, launched in the forum itself, helps in this regard by enabling telcos to achieve "More Bits, Less Watts.”

4. Network energy efficiency equals telecom equipment energy efficiencies. There is still a need for a standardised indicator system for more accurate energy efficiency evaluations—something Huawei has already recommended.

5. Energy-saving must not impact network performance indicators. The former impacts the latter but energy saving features can nonetheless be configured to not affect the actual user experience.

On the Forefront of Digital Transformation—As Always

That the world is going digital is old news. It has been happening for the past several years and it is only accelerating. Keeping up is thus a must, or else businesses face the prospect of little to no growth. This is where Huawei comes in, advancing transformative technologies and making them available to organisations in all industries.