Popular eCommerce and cloud company Alibaba has vowed to achieve carbon neutrality operations by 2030.
The company also introduced a Scope 3+ target to facilitate 1.5 gigatons of decarbonization by 2035.
CEO of Alibaba Group, Daniel Zhang said that the company aims to bring positive, innovative change in society. Alibaba’s ESG strategy is anticipated on their goal to be a good company that will sustain for 102 years and becomes a crucial foundation for Alibaba’s future development.
He further said that they will leverage Alibaba’s unique influence as a platform operator to channelize actions and behavioral changes within merchants, consumers, and partners in China and all over the globe with its newly propose Scope 3+ target aiming to minimize 1.5 gigatons of carbon emissions by 2035.
Alibaba is looking to achieve carbon neutrality for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by the year 2030 and also has set a target of 50 percent carbon intensity reduction for Scope 3.
As per Alibaba’s Climate report released in 2020, the total GHG emissions of Alibaba were 9.514 million metric tons of CO2e, about one-third of the emission within Scope 2 (carbon emission from the energy use, cooling of its data centers), and over half was attributed to Scope 3 emissions (purchased electricity or leased data centers).
Additionally, the company said that its decarbonization initiatives comprise of leveraging energy-efficient technologies that further reduce carbon emissions. Actively using renewable energy for its operation and exploring new carbon removal initiatives.
Back in 2020, Alibaba opened the Zhejiang Renhe data center which has Power Usage Efficiency or PUE as low as 1.09 with the help of liquid cooling technologies.
Currently, the Zhangbei data center is connected to a local district heating system to heat local greenhouses and also has a rainwater collection system.
In terms of taking steps against decarbonization, several western cloud and data center companies are way ahead of their Chinese counterparts.
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