Tencent Meeting reduces carbon emissions by 15 million tons, what opportunities and challenges does new technologies bring to ESG and carbon peaking and carbon neutrality?

Since the "dual carbon" goal was proposed, the awareness of emission reduction and transformation of enterprises has been continuously enhanced. Among them, ESG, as an important metric to measure the long-term sustainable development of enterprises, is self-evident.

On November 9, at the 2023 Financial Street Forum Annual Conference - National "Double Carbon" Strategy and ESG Parallel Forum, guests from the government, financial institutions, and research institutions discussed the establishment of ESG information disclosure standards, the opportunities and challenges brought by ESG to the development of financial institutions and enterprises, and other key topics.

Build a low-carbon scenario with the society

Experts at the meeting believed that the proposal of the "dual carbon" goal and high-quality development strategy provides an unprecedented and significant opportunity for the promotion and implementation of ESG concepts in China.

Peng Sen, President of the China Society for Economic Reform and former Deputy Director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that the core contents of green development, social responsibility and governance efficiency coincide with the new development concept, and the introduction of ESG standards and practices can better promote green development, enhance corporate social responsibility awareness, strengthen corporate governance efficiency, and achieve coordinated development of economy, society and environment.

ESG provides an important framework for companies to balance environmental, social, and governance responsibilities while pursuing economic benefits.

"Tencent Meeting has reduced CO2 emissions by 15 million tons. On the afternoon of the 9th, Shi Mei, vice president of Tencent Cloud and head of the energy and resources industry, said at the above forum that an average of 27.9kg of carbon dioxide can be reduced per Tencent meeting. Combined with coverage and user volume, Tencent Meeting has reduced CO2 emissions by 15 million tons since its launch. Tencent Docs has also been widely used in the industry, and it has also reduced carbon emissions by nearly 200,000 tons since its launch. WeCom has brought a more direct reduction in carbon emissions.

Zhang Qiang, Head of ESG at Microsoft Greater China, emphasized that Microsoft has put forward four sustainable development goals: carbon negative, positive water, zero waste, and ecological protection. At the same time, to achieve these goals, Microsoft is making business innovations including data center construction, energy use, and employee behavior change.

"As a payment tool, we are also trying to leverage more users to accumulate, share and highlight their low-carbon behaviors through the digital capabilities of green payment interfaces and low-carbon label returns, and explore the integrated development of social value and commercial value. Guo Zhongming, director of the product operation center of the WeChat payment platform, said that relying on the extensive business connection and digital capabilities of mobile payment, we will promote the low-carbon consumption process in scenarios such as paperless services, remote services, and sharing economy, build more low-carbon scenarios with the society, and build a complete closed loop to carbon neutrality.

New technologies and digitalization bring opportunities and challenges to ESG and carbon peaking and carbon neutrality

In the context of climate change and sustainable development, the development of new technologies, especially digital technologies, has brought huge opportunities and challenges to achieve the "dual carbon" goal and practice ESG.

For example, ChatGPT, through intelligent language models and natural language processing technology, can better help enterprises and investors make climate information disclosures, provide more accurate and comprehensive data and analysis for ESG assessments, and provide more comprehensive reference and guidance for decision-makers.

Lei Yao, deputy director of the People's Bank of China Research Institute, said that the industry should pay special attention to using the power of digital technology to improve the efficiency of green finance development. He mentioned that from a global perspective, all kinds of enterprises and financial institutions have just started to disclose ESG reports or sustainability reports, and lack relevant talents, report preparation experience and relevant data infrastructure.

Chen Wenhui, president of the Northern New Finance Research Institute and former vice chairman of the National Council of Social Security Fund, emphasized that the competition in the field of "double carbon" mainly depends on the emergence of innovative industries and new technologies, which require a large amount of investment, especially long-term capital investment. Therefore, the financial sector should take supporting scientific and technological innovation as the top priority to help the "dual carbon" strategy.

ESG information disclosure should be in line with international standards and reflect Chinese characteristics

The rapid development of ESG information disclosure standards in the world has provided new opportunities for the development of the global green finance market and the better allocation of green funds.

In June this year, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) released the first sustainability disclosure standards: IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standard 1 General Requirements for Sustainability-related Financial Disclosures (S1) and IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standard 2 Climate-related Disclosures (S2).

Wang Naixiang, chairman of Beijing Green Exchange Co., Ltd., believes that the release of the two standards has established consistent ESG information disclosure and reporting standards for all countries, which will help improve the comparability and transparency of corporate ESG disclosure, and provide an important basis for broadening corporate financing channels and reducing investor risks. However, he also pointed out that the construction of China's ESG standard system is in the early stage of development and has not yet formed a unified standard.

Lei Yao said that in order to reduce the cost of information disclosure and improve efficiency, it is necessary to strengthen the digitalization, standardization and intelligence of sustainable disclosure.

Specifically, Lei Yao pointed out that the so-called digitalization is to strengthen the construction of data infrastructure and improve the level of digitalization in terms of Scope 3 carbon accounting, supply chain carbon footprint management, and reporting, while standardization is to further strengthen the construction of classification standards for green finance and transition finance, and embed the design and market pricing of various financial products. In the future, big data intelligent models can be developed in terms of complex scenario analysis and major financial impact assessment, so as to provide more accurate pricing tools for financial market participants.

In addition, Lei Yao said that it is necessary to be eclectic and do a good job in the research of the Chinese version of the "Sustainability Disclosure Standards". According to the survey, many market players call for the formulation of a Chinese version of the sustainability standard, which should actively converge with international standards, which will help reduce the institutional cost of cross-border operation and investment, and effectively deal with potential green trade barriers. But convergence is not equivalent, and China's sustainability guidelines should reflect Chinese characteristics.