Alibaba Taps Green Technologies Throughout Its Offices to Drive Low-carbon Innovation

Alibaba Group is introducing innovative green technologies across its campuses. The Hangzhou Xixi Campus, global headquarters of Alibaba, is located next to the Xixi National Wetland Park in Hangzhou. This campus boasts a diverse range of species and an abundance of vitality. Alibaba has made efforts to preserve the original ecology of wetlands and streams while building walking paths over the wetlands. Additionally, semi-open meeting and activity spaces have been constructed beside the wetlands to seamlessly integrate nature with office buildings and enhance employees’ connection with their natural surroundings.

Zone B of the campus follows the “sponge city” concepts, which provides the campus with resilience to environmental changes and effective management of rainwater and floods. This design allows Alibaba to recover over 10,000 tons of rainwater for irrigation purposes in the fiscal year 2022.

According to Alibaba‘s ESG report, it aims to reduce carbon emissions per unit area of self-built campuses and average water consumption per employee by 15% compared to 2021 levels by the year 2025.

“To influence more people, we can always start with ourselves. We can take actions at our campus and among our colleagues to drive for greater change,” Felix Liu, President of General Services Administration at Alibaba said.

To manage electricity effectively, Alibaba Cloud’s Energy Expert, an emissions-tracking platform, offers intelligent control algorithms. These algorithms can predict and regulate air conditioning and lighting needs based on various factors such as weather changes, indoor temperature, light conditions, and employee numbers. The system can detect idle energy consumption and abnormal power usage to reduce overall energy consumption significantly. As a result, the Xixi Campus has achieved an energy-saving rate of over 5% for three consecutive years.

Meanwhile, all future constructions by Alibaba will meet both the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold standard and China green building standard. The evaluation criteria for LEED include water resource efficiency, building materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and design innovation among other factors. Alibaba will also explore the conversion of old buildings into office spaces in a safe and high-quality manner. This approach aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that result from demolition and reconstruction activities.

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To promote a low-carbon lifestyle, Alibaba has introduced various initiatives and mechanisms for its employees as well. Every employee can earn points by taking low-carbon emission actions. These points can be redeemed for green-themed souvenirs or other benefits.

The e-commerce giant has pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 and slash carbon emissions by 1.5 gigatons across its digital ecosystem by 2035.