China Mobile gives sneak peek into green biz plans

To paraphrase a well-known movie tag line, CSR reports are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes you trawl through hundreds of pages of report and come up with a load of peanut crackle (read: the unloved craptastic bits no-one wants) or you could end up with nothing but hazelnuts in caramel and some useful insights into how companies are tackling environmental issues.

Today, Greenbang will be bringing you the Cadbury’s Roses that is China Mobile’s CSR report. The company is one of the biggest mobile operators in the world, so here are the nuggets of country fudge she’s found.

This is the overall plan:

On the basis of China’s goal for energy reduction of decreasing energy use per unit of GDP compared to 2005 levels by 20%, the overall goal of our “Green Action Plan” is, by 2010, to increase our energy efficiency (per unit of telecommunications traffic) by 40% compared to 2005 levels and prevent the use of 8.0 billion kWh of electricity. This will prevent the emission of over 6.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to around 2.7 million tonnes of standard coal energy or taking over 1.7 million vehicles off the road for a year.

And here’s how they’re going to do it:

Network equipment is the most energy intensive component of our business and our largest source of carbon emissions. Our base stations account for more than 70% of our total energy use – of which about 35% is used by network equipment and 25% is used by air conditioning and heating. We work continuously to increase network efficiency, which is also a key way in which we can reduce our climate impact.

The use of renewable energy, such as wind and solar energy, has helped us not only improve energy and network stability, it has also mitigated our environmental impact. In Inner Mongolia, we used a combination of wind and solar power systems to provide base stations in remote areas with highly reliable, ow cost access to energy. Currently 202 base stations in the region are powered using these systems. In Henan, by using solar energy stations, we have provided reliable energy sources for 7 stations along highways and roads in remote mountain areas. This has helped us meet desired goals of reducing energy use and create clean green operations. We are using high capacity solar energy systems in base stations located in Hainan’s Sanya’s Yuzhi Zhou Island and the town of Cangjiang Wangxia. We are working to scale up this activity. In Tibet, Qinghai and other remote areas, the extensive use of solar energy for base stations and repeaters has provided a reliable energy source.

We are designing base stations, data centers and offices with energy conservation in mind. We have optimized the layout of new data centers and used standard structures designed to reduce energy consumption, such as wall and ventilation units created to improve cooling.

We will establish a set of standards for packaging and transport to promote the use of alternative packaging and new reusable materials. We will reduce both excessive packaging and the use of wood-based packaging products.

There’s loads more. If you’re of a mind to read the report yourself – and let’s be honest, why wouldn’t you be? It’s full of good stuff – you can get the whole thing here.