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China Mobile makes an ambitious bid to save energy

By Jiang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-22 10:10

Even compared to the country's ambitious target to reduce energy use per unit GDP by 20 percent during the 11th five-year plan (2006-10), China Mobile has laid out an aggressive energy blueprint.

The world's largest mobile phone carrier by number of users plans to cut electricity consumption per unit revenue by 40 percent before 2010 compared to the figure in 2005, which means the company will save up to 8 billion kWh and reduce CO2 emissions by 6.8 million tons in 2010.

It also aims to help other industries save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions using its information technology.

"We have already reduced electricity consumption per unit revenue by 31 percent," Li Zhengmao, executive vice president of China Mobile, told China Business Weekly at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark. "We will be able to reach the 40 percent reduction target in two years."

The China Mobile logo on the company's building in Beijing. [Bloomberg News]

China Mobile took a big step forward in environmental protection in 2007 when the company placed more significance on corporate social responsibility. It started with two major areas - education and environmental protection, both important in the battle against climate change.

In 2007, the company joined the Global Compact, a United Nations organization that combines sovereign countries, non-government organizations and businesses.

It also launched a "green action plan" on environmental protection and mapped out its own energy-saving targets.

In 2008, the company joined the Caring for Climate campaign led by the Global Compact. It also joined The Climate Group, a London-based environmental watchdog that advocates a low-carbon economy.

To achieve its goal, the company has adopted measures ranging from collecting used SIM cards and outfitting energy-saving buildings to technology upgrades and promotion of information technologies to other industries.

Li said the company first began three years ago with limits on electricity consumption by products purchased in its procurement. All equipment suppliers must pledge that their products are the most advanced for saving energy.

"The move may increase our costs in equipment slightly but it reduces overall costs for the company," he said.

Technology improvement

China Mobile then made thorough technology improvement to existing equipment, particularly air conditioning systems.

Li said that telecom equipment works best at a certain temperature, which requires air conditioning, but in the past air conditioners were designed to cool an entire room where the equipment was placed.

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"That was a waste of energy, so we had to find a way to deal with it," he said.

The company joined with major domestic air conditioner makers including Gree to develop new air conditioners that cool equipment directly.

The simple idea helped China Mobile cut power used by air conditioners - which account for a quarter of the company's total electricity consumption - by 40 to 50 percent.

The telecom giant is also a pioneer in adopting alternative energies, using solar and wind power in more than 5,000 base stations, in particular in remote areas such as Qinghai, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. It is now No 1 on the list of global telecom carriers using renewable energy.

Li said some foreign carriers were surprised when they learned China Mobile was applying alternative energy widely because most of them used new energies in only a few pilot stations.

Although operations with new energy sources are only a small proportion of China Mobile's 400,000 base stations, the approach helps the company is power facilities in remote areas.

It takes about 100,000 yuan ($14,633.15) to outfit a new energy base station, while a traditional base station in remote areas may cost 1 million to 2 million yuan because electricity may come from a power plant thousands of kilometers away - and that's a lot of cable, Li said.

"We are not using alternative energy for fashion or other reasons. It does make money for us," he said.

A new company blueprint for the coming 3G era says it plans to increase the proportion of alternative energy base stations to 5 percent of the 160,000 it will build over the next three years.

Despite its own achievements, China Mobile is not satisfied - the telecom industry is actually not a big consumer of energy anyway. The telecom and IT sectors consume only 2 percent of the country's energy.

"A bigger role we can play is to help increase the efficiency of other industries and reduce their energy consumption and emissions by providing them information technologies," Li said. "It is not a hard job to save 10 to 20 percent of energy for them."

The company is now promoting digital ways for many sectors to reduce energy use and has tailored services for each business.

For the taxi business in Tianjin, China Mobile developed a long-range dispatch system that connects a call center to individual cabs. Each cab now saves up to three liters of fuel each day due to more efficient allocation of taxis, which also helps reduce traffic problems in the city.

For a taxi company with 3,000 cabs, the system will help save up to 3,000 tons of fuel, which in turn eliminates 7,400 tons of CO2 emissions.