Policy & Commitment

Chunghwa Telecom has announced its goal of Net Zero by 2050. Since its primary source of GHG emissions is energy use, Chunghwa Telecom has made energy management and energy conservation promotion a top priority.

Regarding energy management, Chunghwa Telecom is the first telecom company in Taiwan that introduced and was certified to ISO 50001 Energy Management（Energy Management System, EMS）.

To promote energy conservation, we leverage our extensive expertise in power environment monitoring and system development. We actively work on improving electricity consumption in office spaces, data centers, and base stations to enhance energy efficiency, reduce costs, and effectively minimize the environmental impact of carbon emissions.

In addition, Chunghwa Telecom has committed to the RE100 initiative to use 100% renewable energy by 2040. This commitment drives us towards achieving net-zero transformation, aligning with our goal of becoming an environmentally friendly company and attaining net-zero emissions.

Energy Audits

The Energy Audit at Chunghwa Telecom falls into 5 steps:

1. Energy Use Identification: Identify the current sources of energy use for the operations of each unit based on the areas they use and manage.
2. Energy Use Analysis: Verify the measurement range and data accuracy of measurement equipment based on measurements and other energy consumption data sources, evaluate past and present energy use and consumption, and forecast future energy use and consumption.
3. Energy Factor Identification: Identify variable factors with significant impact to the sources of current energy use.
4. Significant Energy Use Evaluation: Evaluate various energy-consuming operations, activities, equipment, and machines and assign scores, in consideration of the current energy consumption respectively, opportunities for energy performance improvement (savings potential, improvement costs, payback period, etc.), and the intensity of legal/regulatory requirements, and thereby determine the significant energy uses.
5. Control Measures: Prioritize significant energy uses, or those with the highest scores of energy consumption ratio in the evaluation, for improvement. All units ought to control significant energy uses, including operational controls or establishing targets, solutions, measures, and programs for improvement or maintenance.

Actions to Reduce the Energy Use

Chunghwa Telecom leverages its abundant ICT talents to promote the strategy of Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction via Technology. The key actions include introduction of new 5G C-RAN architecture to significantly improve base station power consumption, phase-out of 3G networks as of 2024 and upgrade of voice calls to VoLTE to deliver better service to customers, self-development of an intelligent Energy Operation Center (EOC) to automatically collect and analyze power data comprehensively, enabling real-time monitoring of energy-saving results and achieving energy saving, acceleration of phasing out old, energy-demanding equipment, reduction of the PUE of IDCs, and acceleration of the IP transition of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), thus promoting technology-driven all-round energy conservation and carbon reduction.

In addition, regarding highly energy-demanding equipment, Chunghwa Telecom takes energy efficiency into account right at the source of the procurement process. It employs green construction materials for new IDC and hotel construction, replaces old vehicles with new counterparts that is eco-friendly and energy-efficient, and introduces electric vehicles.

Progress Evaluation in Reducing Energy Consumption

The energy management at Chunghwa Telecom is the responsibility of the Environmental Group of the Sustainable Development Promotion Committee. The Environmental Group convenes monthly meetings, with the agenda covering tracking and reviewing the energy use of business groups and branches, evaluating the progress and effectiveness of various strategies and action plans in energy use reduction as well as further identifying and analyzing opportunities to energy performance improvement. For instance, a research team has been set up, dedicated to exploring energy-saving technologies for IDCs and base stations, with the findings shared during the meetings. On the basis of the reviews and assessments of energy use in monthly meetings, business groups and branches continuously better their energy performances.

Use of Clean or Green Energy

2 approaches are adopted at Chunghwa Telecom to access green energy use: self-generation for consumption and power purchase agreement (PPA) for renewable energy. In 2023, a total of 73.57 million kWh of electricity was used, and 73,541 Taiwan Renewable Energy Certificates (T-RECs) were obtained. Details are as follows:

• Self-generation for consumption: Chunghwa Telecom has installed solar PV system to the Banqiao IDC as well as applied for and obtained T-RECs from the National Renewable Energy Certification Center with 79 T-RECs (No. 17SP0007-B023000001 to 17SP0007-B023000079) obtained in 2023, equivalent to 79,000 kWh of electricity.
• PPA for renewable energy: Chunghwa Telecom has signed PPAs with Helios Power Co., Ltd. and Foxwell Power Co., Ltd., with a total of 73.49 million kWh of renewable energy procured in 2023. The certificates, totaling 73,462 T-RECs, can be found on the T-REC website. Chunghwa Telecom is working on signing Corporate Power Purchase Agreement (CPPA) to further raise the proportion of renewable energy use year by year.

Investments in Innovation or R&D to Decrease Energy

Chunghwa Telecom is proactively engaged in the research and development of cutting-edge technologies for carbon reduction. As the only Taiwanese company to co-found the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (IOWN GF) with global tech giants and hold a seat on the board, Chunghwa Telcom actively promotes the All-Photonics Network (APN) technology. The Company is committed to achieving the sustainability targets “to lower power consumption by 100 times; deliver higher transmission capacity by 125 times; and lower end-to-end latency by 200 times.”

1. Base Station and IDC Energy Conservation to Power Sustainable Development

• Base Station Energy Conservation: 5G energy-saving technologies have been introduced and implemented on the experimental 5G network of Chunghwa Telecom Laboratories (CHT-TL), and the energy-saving performance of new-generation hardware (including antennas and baseband modules) compared to older equipment was tested. Meanwhile, the deployment methods for various sleep modes to achieve a balance of power-saving, recovery time, and user impact were developed and analyzed, along with energy-saving tests and analyses.
  (1). 5G multi-carrier cell energy-saving function launched, capable of saving 70,000 kWh of electricity per year.
  (2). Time-division AI smart energy-saving POC in force, with energy-saving periods expected to be > 6 hours per day and an energy-saving performance of 22% or more.
• Cloud Services IDC Energy Conservation: Offer energy monitoring and management mechanisms for enterprise cloud platforms through carbon reduction management of cloud services. Host energy-saving control and RDMA technology are utilized to improve the efficiency of network data transmission. The technologies have been piloted on the R&D host of the cloud IDC at CHT-TL to reduce the additional energy consumption of the original network protocols and schedule automatic shutdown during off-peak hours, saving 27%, or approximately 2,961 kWh of electricity, per month.

2. All-Photonics Network to improve the Energy Efficiency of Optical Networks

By introducing Open Transmission Network (OTN) equipment into APN IDCs and developing All-Photonics Network (APN) technology, power consumption in transmission networks is reduced.
(1). The phase-out of usable equipment is avoided, with a single dedicated device to be separated into three independent devices to enable procurement and phase-out per the needs of individual devices, saving 50% of equipment space and 80% of equipment power consumption at IDC.
(2). Transmission via APN reduces the number of optical-electrical conversions in end-to-end transmission, lowers power consumption during transmission, improves efficiency (bandwidth demand and latency reduced by 1/2), and saves energy consumption.

Energy Efficiency Training & Culture Establishment

To cultivate professional talents in telecom technology and business management, Chunghwa Telecom has specifically established Chunghwa Telecom Training Institute dedicated to talent development efforts. The training programs are intimately tied with the business development at the Company to facilitate the corporate development, meet customer needs, and create the core competencies and sustainable competitive advantages of Chunghwa Telecom.

Chunghwa Telecom Training Institute regularly organizes a series of energy-related training courses each year to raise employee awareness of, and establish the culture of, energy efficiency. The results of the training courses held in 2023 are as follows:

• 40 training sessions on professional skills in power and air conditioning system planning, design, and equipment maintenance were organized for the personnel of the Company, with an attendance of over 3,200 person-days.
• Assistance was provided in obtaining licenses of Technician for Industrial Wiring Work, Technician for Interior Wiring Work, and Solar PV Installation, coupled with the qualification of electrical supervisor for high and low voltage power rooms, with 34 individuals obtaining the license of Level B Technician for Industrial Wiring Work and 14 individuals obtaining the license of Level C Technician for Interior Wiring Work.
• Trainings on the Intelligent Energy Network Service (iEN), Environment ARtificer Theurgy 2.0 (EARTH 2.0), Energy Operation Center (EOC), and energy storage system POC were organized, with the training on ISO 50001 Energy Management (EnMS) systems to be introduced to help reduce energy costs in the future.

In the meantime, Chunghwa Telecom Training Institute has been actively offering a series of ESG courses in recent years. The education and training have internalized ESG as the DNA of corporate employees, while cultivating outstanding “corporate sustainability ESG” professionals for the Group.

Throughout 2023, a total of 346 ESG-related training courses were made available, training nearly 40,000 employees. It also collaborated with the Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy (TAISE) to organize the Sustainability Manager Certification Training Program to encourage employees with an interest in ESG-related work to participate in training and obtain certification. 156 employees obtained the Corporate Sustainability Manager Certificate in the end, making Chunghwa Telecom the company in Taiwan with the largest number of employees holding such certificate.

IDC Energy Saving

The electricity consumption at the IDCs and base stations are the main contributors to the carbon emissions at Chunghwa Telecom. In 2020, we officially made the commitment to “100% IDCs using renewable energy by 2030.”

We are actively procuring renewable energy from the private sector. Part of the renewable energy procurement has been completed in 2023. The power wheeled was 73.49 million kWh cumulatively, in which approximately 69.94 million kWh was used by IDCs with a plan to raise the procurement amount year by year to increase the share of renewable energy used. Through the accurate construction of 5G base stations and the innovative C-RAN architecture, it leverages the ICT technologies to cut GHG emissions. Aside from transformation of decades of experiences cumulated in electricity environmental monitoring and system development into energy management technical support to launch “Intelligent Energy Network Service,” Chunghwa Telecom was also the first in the industry to propose the state-of-the-art C-RAN architecture. It not only saves a huge amount of energy consumed by air-conditioning for cooling and the supporting equipment but also effectively saves spaces required in the base stations, achieving the goal of low-carbon sustainable network construction.

To reduce the overall carbon emissions of the Company, we have incorporated 100% IDCs using renewable energy in the long-term carbon management goals of the Company. Through transformation of Internet Data Centers (IDCs) and VoIP technology for the telecom equipment introduced, we expect to save a huge amount of energy consumption, using technology to save energy, cut emissions, and achieve the vision of net-zero emissions.