Net-Zero campuses: the building blocks of tomorrow’s cities

Why is the Net-Zero Campus important in accelerating the delivery of smart sustainable cities? Because the world is not enough. 

According to numbers from the Global Footprint Network, we're using nature over 1.8 times faster than our planet's biocapacity can regenerate. It's equivalent to the resources of more than 1.8 Earths—but we have only one. 

So, what are we going to do about it; how quickly do we need to move; and why are cities so important? 

Because nearly 80% of energy consumption happens there, and 60% of greenhouse gases are produced there. But cities only cover about 2% of the Earth's surface. 

Throughout history, people have moved to cities for three key reasons. First is security. People used to go behind city walls to stay safe. Second, for economic activity, to be able to trade. And finally, for social interaction. 

So, how can we reflect all that in a more sustainable way? 

Currently, not only are there more cities, but they're growing in size. A megacity is a city with a population of more than 10 million. The UN predicts that, by 2030, there will be 43 megacities, twice as many as in 2010 and up from 31 today.

Those cities are increasingly in the Asia Pacific region. This offers the Global South a great opportunity to do things differently, and better. 

Rome wasn't built in a day

Cities are not built in one go. They tend to be developed (or redeveloped) in different districts. Each district can be seen as a campus. 

A campus is any bite-size chunk of a city—anything from an entire district to a single development—whose management and control come under a single administration. A shopping mall, a factory, or even a mixed-use development can be a campus. And if each campus can move towards net zero then our cities and countries would achieve their targets faster. 

If you removed the roads from a city, you'd be left with a collection of campuses. Campuses form the building blocks of cities. They are the main carriers of work and life, and the key to economic development for a connected and intelligent world. High-quality 10G campus networks, combined with intelligent analytics, fuel an innovative digital platform ecosystem. 

Carbon-conscious ICT

Cities globally face big challenges: climate change, resource scarcity, and population growth. Amidst urbanization, building sustainable and resilient communities is paramount. One way is to create Net-Zero Campuses that use technology to reduce energy consumption, emissions, and waste, creating a better future for everyone. 

The Net-Zero Campus is the campus of the future. A lot of campuses and cities are at least trying to head towards net-zero energy, balancing the energy consumed versus that generated on site, typically measured by the year. We can break that down further into three elements. There's abatement (reducing consumption), generating on-site, and managing the rest better. We call this carbon-conscious ICT. 

In a building or campus, the energy consumption from the ICT network is typically in the low, single-digit numbers unless you have a large data center there. But the ITU predicts that, between 2020 and 2030, the energy consumption of enterprise and data center networks will nearly double. It's a significant challenge—and for Huawei, as one of the largest tech companies in the world, a responsibility—to address. 

There are three key parameters to carbon-conscious ICT: energy consumption, the space it takes up (i.e., utilization), and energy efficiency. 

We are moving away from a traditional copper-driven, three-tier network. If we transition to all-fiber, we can use a two-tier architecture. 

Towards a new kind of network

In most typical tower buildings, every floor has two telecom rooms. If we can free up that space, or remove it completely, the space utilization could pay for the technology for the entire lifespan of the actual network itself. Similarly, if we move to all-flash storage for data centers, we reduce the physical space required and the energy consumption of storage. AI requires massive data storage. If that data storage is done on all-flash, or newer technologies, we can reduce the amount of energy and materials required and therefore reduce the carbon footprint. 

Similarly, if I can generate an additional percentage point or two of energy in the limited rooftop space on my campus, then that’s a critical difference. The efficiency of the inverters and the battery storage technology really matters on a campus. Advances in technology under solar and energy storage, utilization, generation efficiency, storage efficiency all have a significant enabling factor for the Net-Zero Campus.

And we manage the rest better. Huawei is the first and only ICT company to have implemented ITU-T recommendation L.1333 into our enterprise networks. It means we can provide near real-time energy and carbon data, and pass that data up to high-level energy and carbon-management applications for the whole campus and the whole city. And ultimately for the whole country.

Finally, we're using tidal flow algorithms, allowing us to advance towards the Holy Grail of zero bits, zero watts: if there's no data traffic, there's no energy consumption. We’re getting there.

Real progress is being made and there are already campuses that are working towards net zero. Huawei's Digital Power headquarters in Shenzhen has BIPV or Building Integrated Photovoltaics. There are other great projects such as Biosphere 3 in Shenzhen, or Masdar City and Dubai University in the UAE, which are designed to be Net-Zero Campus projects. 

In short, cities are not built overnight. They’re built step-by-step, phase-by-phase, or even redeveloped typically in districts. It's great that we can write comprehensive documents on guidelines and codes, and have a new standard such as the L.1333. But if it’s not implemented and used, then what was the real value? Guidelines only get you so far. If there's no implementation or minimum regulation for all buildings to be green or more sustainable, then it simply won't happen in anything but a piecemeal and incomplete way. 

Delivering on net-zero means every campus is tending towards a Net-Zero Campus. And only then can our cities, our countries, and our world achieve the target that’s critical for all our futures.

LINK to Huawei's white paper with Masdar City: https://bit.ly/4dLN8HX