Huawei requires suppliers to be green and low carbon, and encourages the realization of carbon neutrality
Huawei requires suppliers to be green and low carbon, and encourages the realization of carbon neutrality, In recent years, Huawei has been committed to green and low carbon development, and in 2021, Huawei will incorporate carbon emission reduction requirements into the whole process of supplier management, and will put forward carbon emission reduction requirements for all suppliers.
Huawei requires suppliers to be green and low-carbon, and encourages the realization of carbon neutrality.1The 2022 Huawei Supplier Carbon Emission Reduction Conference was held in a combination of on- and offline sessions, and the theme of the conference was "Green and Low Carbon, Synergistic ****Win". At the conference, representatives from relevant government departments, experts, Huawei, and suppliers attended, and on-site introductions and sharing of the global carbon emissions reduction situation, China's "dual-carbon" policy, carbon emissions reduction paths, industry standards, excellent practices, and Huawei's supply chain carbon emissions reduction requirements.
Tan Qingliang, Director of the Climate Change Department of the Shenzhen Environmental Protection Bureau, said that Carbon Dafeng Carbon Neutral is not only an energy revolution, but also an extremely extensive and profound green industrial revolution, which will reconfigure the entire industrial chain. A high-quality enterprise should not only take the responsibility of carbon neutrality itself, but also establish a carbon neutral supply chain with its suppliers in order to realize the emission reduction target of the whole supply chain.
"Huawei has integrated green requirements into its procurement quality prioritization strategy and the entire process of its procurement business, and has made clear green requirements in all aspects of the entire process, including supplier certification, selection, on-site audits, and performance management, etc. Carbon emission reduction is both a challenge and an opportunity for Huawei's suppliers." Huawei Chief Supply Officer Ying Weimin said.
Ma Jun, Director of the Public Environmental Research Center (IPE), pointed out that the Azure Map database has now included 2177,468 regulatory records, and through the data to help promote the green supply chain and green finance, and through the Enterprise Climate Action Index to guide enterprises to actively respond to climate change, to help enterprises to achieve a zero-carbon transition.
China attaches great importance to green supply chain management, and has successively issued the Guiding Opinions on Actively Promoting Supply Chain Innovation and Application, the Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Accelerating the Establishment of a Sound Green, Low-Carbon, and Circular Development Economic System, and the Guidelines on Green Supply Chain Management for Green Manufacturing Manufacturing Enterprises, which provide a basic model for enterprises to carry out green supply chain management. management provides a basic model for enterprises to carry out green supply chain management.
Huawei launched a supplier carbon emission reduction pilot program in 2013, with more than 100 suppliers participating in the pilot program. Huawei also continues to strengthen the management of supplier carbon emissions. in 2020, it began to promote TOP suppliers, which account for more than 80% of the procurement amount, to set carbon reduction targets and implement carbon reduction actions. in 2021, it incorporated carbon reduction requirements into the entire process of supplier management, put forward carbon emission reduction requirements for all suppliers, and encouraged leading suppliers to achieve carbon neutrality in advance and encourage the sharing of excellent practices, etc., in order to realize green, low-carbon, and sustainable development of the entire supply chain. Huawei is also working with its suppliers to implement a green, low-carbon, and sustainable development plan for the entire supply chain.
Huawei requires suppliers to be green and low-carbon, and encourages the realization of carbon neutrality.2"Huawei has integrated green requirements into its procurement quality prioritization strategy and the entire process of its procurement business, and has made green requirements clear in all aspects of the entire process, such as supplier certification, selection, on-site audits, and performance management." At the 2022 Huawei Supplier Carbon Emission Reduction Conference held today, Huawei's Chief Supply Officer Ying Weimin said that carbon emission reduction is both a challenge and an opportunity for Huawei's suppliers.
According to the introduction, the theme of this conference is "green low-carbon, synergistic **** win". Huawei hopes that all suppliers will take the initiative to meet the challenge of carbon emission reduction, seize the opportunity, continue to practice the concept of green and low-carbon development, set feasible and challenging carbon emission reduction targets, and work with Huawei to continue to reduce the total amount of carbon emissions in the supply chain, and to realize the sustainable development of the entire supply chain in a green and low-carbon manner. More than 2,000 people from more than 600 suppliers*** around the world attended the conference online.
"Carbon Dafeng Carbon Neutral is not just an energy revolution, but also an extremely broad and profound green industrial revolution that will reconfigure the entire industrial chain. A high-quality enterprise should not only take the responsibility of carbon neutrality itself, but also join hands with its suppliers to establish a supply chain with carbon neutrality so as to realize the emission reduction target of the whole supply chain." said Tan Qingliang, Director of Climate Change Response Department, Shenzhen Bureau of Ecology and Environment.
The conference also invited experts and outstanding supplier representatives to attend, introducing and sharing the global carbon emissions reduction situation, China's "dual-carbon" policy, carbon emissions reduction pathways, industry standards and excellent practices, as well as Huawei's supply chain carbon emissions reduction requirements.
Ma Jun, Director of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), said, "The Azure Map database now contains 2177,468 regulatory records, and the data is used to promote green supply chains and green finance, as well as guiding companies to actively respond to climate change through the Corporate Climate Action Index, which helps companies achieve a zero-carbon transformation. "
In recent years, Huawei has been committed to green and low-carbon development, launching a supplier carbon reduction pilot program as early as 2013, when more than 100 suppliers participated in the pilot. Since then, Huawei has continued to strengthen the management of supplier carbon emissions. in 2020, Huawei began to promote TOP suppliers, which account for more than 80% of the procurement amount, to set carbon reduction targets and implement carbon reduction actions. in 2021, Huawei will incorporate carbon reduction requirements into the whole process of supplier management, and put forward carbon emission reduction requirements for all suppliers, encouraging the leading suppliers to achieve carbon neutrality in advance.
Not long ago, Huawei released the Green Development 2030 report, "Huawei will continue to carry out ICT technological innovation around building green ICT infrastructure, accelerating the development of renewable energy, and several other aspects to enable the sustainable development of human society." Zhang Hongxi, Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei ICT Infrastructure, introduced.
Currently, climate and environmental changes have become a huge challenge to the survival and development of human society. "Through the integration and application of digital technology with renewable energy and clean energy, we can increase the proportion of new energy generation, optimize the energy supply and demand model, and accelerate the pace of energy green and low-carbon transformation, which will ultimately benefit the entire energy system and society, and achieve green and sustainable development to meet the challenges posed by climate change."
Liang Hua, Chairman of Huawei, has publicly stated that the global energy savings and emissions reductions brought about by the ICT industry will far exceed the energy consumption and carbon emissions of its own operations, and according to the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), ICT technology will help reduce global carbon emissions by 20% by 2030 by empowering other industries.
Huawei asks suppliers to go green and low-carbon, encouraging carbon neutrality3After Apple, Huawei is also asking its suppliers to reduce carbon.
On May 24, 2022, at the Huawei Supplier Carbon Reduction Conference, Huawei's Chief Supply Officer, Ying Weimin, announced that Huawei had incorporated green into its procurement process and made green requirements clear at all stages.
In millet, OPPO, vivo and other domestic consumer electronics manufacturers, Huawei was the first to put forward this requirement for suppliers, and even clear to the procurement process.
Huawei began piloting a supplier carbon reduction program in 2013, and only began accelerating it in 2020, pushing headline suppliers, which accounted for more than 80% of procurement, to set carbon reduction targets. Apparently, Huawei accelerated its supply chain transformation only after "dual-carbon" became a global trend.
Huawei has also given a clear timeline for the pace of emissions reduction, including a plan to complete setting carbon reduction targets for its top 100 suppliers by 2025.
After Apple, Huawei, with its base station, cloud services, and consumer electronics business, has also joined in reducing carbon emissions, which is of no small significance to global carbon neutrality.
Huawei and Apple's carbon-reducing moves are also paving the way for their own overseas business. Particularly as the EU focuses more and more on "dual-carbon", the cleanliness of the supply chain can even affect the future global distribution of products.
The pressure to reduce carbon emissions will also gradually spread to other consumer electronics brands. In addition to Huawei and Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, and others have yet to set their own carbon-neutral targets. It's not that they lack a sense of responsibility, but it's that they have a lot of money and interest behind them, and it's very hard to rush into a supply chain revamp.
The trend
Huawei needs to comply with the increasingly stringent international environment for reducing emissions, and on May 17th, the European Parliament passed the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) bill.
Simply put, the biggest impact on Chinese manufacturers is that it will tax energy-intensive products exported to the EU, such as cement, fertilizer, and steel. Furthermore, the bill proposes to include "indirect emissions", i.e. emissions from electricity used by suppliers, in the assessment.
At present, the CBAM bill will affect only cement, electricity, fertilizer, steel and aluminum, but the EU carbon reduction is relatively aggressive, there is no guarantee that it will not be extended to consumer electronics in the future.
Apple saw the trend toward carbon reduction early on, and of course it had a lot to do with CEO Cook's own focus on the environment. Apple has also been the most aggressive in reducing carbon emissions, and has faced a lot of controversy because of that aggressiveness, with the biggest criticism being that it no longer gives away charging heads.
But Apple does offer a path to carbon reduction for many manufacturers.
The first is the `use of recyclable materials'. Consumer electronics use a lot of rare earth elements and metals, and Apple products use renewable or recyclable materials for aluminum, steel, gold, and some rare earths. Eventually to Apple hopes to realize 100% renewable recycled materials procurement, production of new products will not consume additional metal, rare earth resources.
And it makes sense for Apple and Huawei to start reducing emissions from their supply chains first. According to Deloitte's report, smartphones produce 146 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, with more than 80% coming from the production chain. By controlling carbon emissions from the supply chain, you're actually controlling the overall carbon footprint.
This requires suppliers to get on the carbon reduction bandwagon. in 2015, Apple started a clean energy program, and by this year, 55 Chinese suppliers had committed to using only clean energy.
Apple and Huawei have a strong voice over their supply chains, and they can push them to reduce emissions, but it's hard for other vendors to do the same.
The push is tough
At the moment, it's more likely that Google, Tencent, and Baidu, which have a relatively easy time reducing emissions, will announce their own carbon-neutral targets, such as Tencent's proposal to make its operations and supply chain carbon-neutral by no later than 2030, as it did in February. Companies like Sony and Microsoft, which are involved in game consoles, have also announced carbon-neutral timelines, but more manufacturers are still waiting to see what happens.
Huawei has not set its own carbon-neutral timeframe, though it has asked its supply chain to gradually shift to cleaner energy. Apple's controversial and aggressive move has proven that hardware makers have a much tougher time achieving carbon neutrality than internet companies.
Even a strong Apple needs to play with its headline suppliers.
One of the unavoidable facts is that Samsung, Apple's head screen supplier, is not on the list of emission reduction suppliers. Samsung Electronics has also publicly stated that it has not been able to develop a specific roadmap for zero emissions in 2030.
Most critical for the electronics industry is the use of electricity, with Apple reporting that 70% of carbon emissions in its supply chain come from electricity use.
But even replacing fossil fuel electricity use is tough. Even though the South Korean government has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050, Samsung still gets more than 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels today. Hyundai, SK, LG and other large manufacturing industries are also similar to Samsung, it is difficult to complete the clean energy substitution.
The supply chain for consumer electronics is complex, with giants like Samsung and countless smaller suppliers scattered around the world. For small suppliers, carbon neutral investment is not high, such as the installation of small-scale distributed photovoltaic power plants can meet the power generation, Apple also in the form of clean energy funds, and suppliers *** with investment in clean energy.
But for large companies, becoming carbon neutral means a huge investment, which is why the manufacturing industry has struggled to push forward with its plans.
According to media reports, Hyundai Steel is spending 350 billion won ($2 billion) just to buy carbon capture devices, and their entire profit doesn't cover the cost of equipment purchases and carbon credits. Sony, which set up a carbon neutral program, is also 10 years behind Apple in its realization. According to Sony's Sustainability Report 2021, Sony's renewable energy use currently accounts for only 7% of its overall electricity consumption.
And Huawei's emissions reductions are more complicated. Even if they achieve carbon neutrality in their supply chain, they will have a hard time addressing the energy consumption in base station use. In particular, the surge in 5G power use will make it harder to reduce carbon emissions.
In the network equipment life cycle, in fact, production carbon emissions account for only 2%, the use of carbon emissions up to 80-95%. Even if the supplier is carbon neutral, Huawei still needs to address the carbon emissions from subsequent operations and maintenance.
In addition to the company's own business is difficult to replace in a short period of time, behind the supply chain transformation even includes the energy structure of each country. For example, South Korea has always been dominated by fossil energy and is the world's fourth largest coal importer. At present, South Korea still has a number of coal power plants open, the installed capacity of coal power is still rising. The country's energy structure is not something that Samsung can change.
And China's current carbon neutral first focus on high-energy-consumption industries, such as power, chemical, etc. Consumer electronics emissions reduction is more dependent on company autonomy. When the global cell phone industry is shrinking, in the short term, it will be difficult to see a roadmap for Samsung and Xiaomi, who have more difficult and urgent problems to worry about.