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Huawei and ITU Collaborate on Telecom Lithium Battery White Paper

On March 4, 2025, in the vibrant city of Barcelona, the Huawei Global Digital Power Summit took place during the MWC 2025, focusing on the theme "AI Powering a Greener ICT." This key event gathered operators, industry leaders, and experts from around the globe to explore new development opportunities in this promising era of full intelligence.

During the summit, Charles Yang, Senior Vice President of Huawei and head of Huawei Digital Power’s Global Marketing, Sales, and Services, took the stage to highlight significant achievements in carbon emission reduction over recent years. Yet, he stressed that the climate crisis remains a pressing challenge for humanity. The telecom sector itself contributes approximately 600 million tons of carbon emissions, accounting for 2% of the global total.

As the industry moves toward carbon neutrality, telecom operators face three major challenges: rising emissions, high energy consumption, and escalating energy costs. Huawei Digital Power aims to address these issues by integrating digital and power electronics technologies to transform operators from energy consumers into energy producers.

Significantly, many mainstream operators worldwide have partnered with Huawei to not only save energy and reduce emissions but also decrease their energy OPEX. Additionally, these operators are tapping into virtual power plants (VPPs) to engage in the electricity market, thereby discovering the "second curve" of business growth. In Pakistan, for instance, Huawei has facilitated the transition of customers from generators to photovoltaic (PV) power systems with an energy storage system (ESS) solution, which has cut fuel consumption by 96% per site. It is estimated that the green transformation across a thousand sites will lower energy OPEX by 38%.

In the Czech Republic, Huawei has enabled operators to extend their backup durations and boost their revenues by participating in the electricity market based on ESS. Similarly, in Finland, Huawei helped a telecom operator integrate ESS into residential, commercial, and industrial scenarios, enabling participation in frequency response services in the electricity market, thus significantly increasing revenue. In Inner Mongolia, China, Huawei proposed a subsystems decomposition solution to upgrade an AI data center, enhancing the rapid deployment of large language model services for customers.

According to Yang, Huawei Digital Power has empowered clients in the ICT sector to produce 2.28 billion kWh of green energy and achieve savings of 81.6 billion kWh of electricity, equivalent to a reduction of 39.86 million tons of carbon emissions and the planting of 54.46 million trees.

At the summit, the ITU and Huawei jointly released a groundbreaking white paper titled "Lithium Batteries for Telecom Sites." The document advocates for the use of "high-quality lithium batteries," stipulating that these batteries must exhibit excellent performance parameters and underscoring the importance of a comprehensive safety system structure. The white paper also analyzes safety issues for lithium batteries in telecom sites, shares the latest global research findings, and established best practices aimed at promoting the safe, reliable, and efficient application of lithium batteries in the communications sector.

Engineer Reyna Úbeda from the ITU-T Environment, EMF, Climate Action, and Circular Economy Working Group 5 noted that the organization has developed standards to ensure environmental efficiency in the ICT sector. High-quality and safe lithium batteries are critical for facilitating more efficient energy storage and utilization in telecom facilities, thereby reducing the overall carbon footprint of ICT operations.

The release of the Lithium-Ion Battery Safety Application White Paper is also geared towards promoting standardized and large-scale applications of lithium-ion batteries in the data center industry. As artificial intelligence applications and various intelligent scenarios introduce new opportunities and challenges for energy consumption, the global ICT industry is on the brink of significant developments in this new era of full intelligence.

Huawei Digital Power is committed to continuously investing in innovation to generate new business value and build a better, greener future in collaboration with like-minded global partners.

For more information, you can download the white paper here.