At present, it has become a global consensus to address climate change and promote green, low-carbon and sustainable development. China's machinery and electronic foreign economic and trade industry has made excellent achievements in green, low-carbon and sustainable development. In order to summarize the experience of the industry, CCCME collected green development cases from its member enterprises, and together with Deloitte China, prepared the Report on Sustainable Development of China's Machinery and Electronic Foreign Economic and Trade and Collection of Cases on Green Development of CCCME Members.

 

The report analyzes the significance of the sustainable development of the machinery and electronic foreign economic and trade industry, and summarizes the excellent enterprise cases in five aspects: Contribution to International Cooperation for Sustainable Development, Innovation in Green Products and Services, Green and Low-carbon Transition of Enterprises, Building Responsible Supply Chains, and Fulfillment of Social Responsibilities. In this article, we will share the cases of innovation in green products and services.

 

 

Promoting green products and services innovation, and supporting the achievement of carbon neutrality goal as scheduled. Based on the current level of economic development, industrial and energy development in China, achieving the 2060 carbon neutrality goal faces challenges including a steep cut in emission reduction, heavy tasks in transformation, difficulty in core technologies, and large volume in invested capital. Focusing on green products and services innovation is of great significance for solving key challenges and promoting the process of green and low-carbon development. China has initially established a "1+N" policy system for carbon neutrality, including Working Guidance for Carbon Dioxide Peaking and Carbon Neutrality in Full and Faithful Implementation of the New Development Philosophy indicated to "strengthen research on green and low-carbon technologies and promoting their application" and "speed up the research, development and dissemination of advanced and applicable technologies", giving birth to a top-level design leadership for green product and service innovation; In August 2022, three departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the Action Plan for Carbon Dioxide Peaking in the Industrial Sector, focusing on "innovation-driven growth", adhering to take innovation as the first driving force, strengthening technological innovation and promoting low-carbon technology and equipment research and development, clarifying the improvement of the supply of green and low-carbon products in major actions, leveraging the support of green and low-carbon product equipment in carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. Besides, the Action Plan also focused on improving the design, development, and promotion mechanism, building a green and low-carbon product supply system, and setting the strategic goal by 2025 of creating a group of ecological (green) design demonstration enterprises, establishing and revising about 300 green and low-carbon product evaluation standards, and developing and promoting 10,000 types of green and low-carbon products.

 

The electromechanical industry is an important support for modern production and plays an important role in the country's process of achieving carbon neutrality. In recent years, China's machinery and electronic industry has continuously increased investment in technological innovation, promoted green product upgrading, and continuously improved energy efficiency. The proportion of green electromechanical products in foreign trade has continued to increase, contributing significantly to promoting the achievement of China's carbon neutrality goals and facilitating the global response to climate change and carbon reduction.

 

 

CMEC: Deep Innovation in PV Manufacturing Technologies to Facilitate Energy Transition of Abu Dhabi

China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC) has been deeply involved in global energy governance reform by focusing on new PV manufacturing technologies, and its construction of Al Dhafra PV2 solar power plant project in Abu Dhabi has increased the proportion of clean energy in UAE's overall energy mix.

 

Situated in the suburb of Abu Dhabi, the project occupies a land area of 20 km2, and it has approximately 4 million PV panels, 300,000 pile foundations, 30,000 sets of tracking supports, over 2,000 cleaning robots, 8,000 string inverters, 180 box transformers and over 15,000 km of cables. The project has set the world's lowest electricity price record in the field of PV power generation through technological innovation, configuration optimization, and introduction of the state-of-art PV manufacturing technologies and design ideas as well as tremendous efforts from the two aspects of energy efficiency improvement and cost reduction. Technical highlights mainly include creative integration scheme, advanced assembly selection, efficient cleaning system and CADA control system:

 

• Creative integration solution: The project takes subarray design as the core, makes full use of its geographical conditions, adopts networking solution of high capacity ratio and large array, and uses flat uniaxial tracking support in combination with two P-type assemblies for the first time for precision guidance and capture of every ray of sunshine.

 

• Advanced assembly selection: The project creatively uses P-type ultrahigh power assembly that carries 210 mm large silicon wafer and N-type TOPCon ultrahigh power assembly that carries large silicon wafer on a large scale, which can significantly improve anti-hidden crack and anti-hot spot performance, and improve power generation efficiency with assembly efficiency of over 21%.

 

• Efficient cleaning system: The project uses Sol-Bright's 5th generation of new robot capable of waterless dry sweeping with rolling brush, and the large capacity lithium iron sulphate battery allows the robot to travel for over 4.4 km, which can effectively reduce stain rate of assembly surface and ensure the power generation.

 

• CADA control system: Given the characteristics of large installed capacity of the project and large number of signals of different systems, it uses a primary SCADA system and different independent secondary SCADA systems (support, robot, etc.) to guarantee stable operation of the whole power plant.

Panoramic View of Al Dhafra PV2 Solar Power Plant Project in Abu Dhabi

 

CMEC has given impetus to high-quality development of the BRI through this project. By now, the project has successfully realized 2,100 MWdc full capacity grid connection, peak power generation of up to 1,640 MWac and full load power generation to the outside world. As one of the most advanced solar power plants in the world, Al Dhafra solar power plant can supply power to 160,000 households upon commissioning, increase Abu Dhabi's total installed PV capacity to approximately 3.2 GW, help Abu Dhabi reduce 2.4 million tons of carbon emission on a yearly basis, and increase proportion of clean energy in UAE's overall energy structure to over 13%, contributing to sustainable development of UAE national energy economy.

 

 

ZTE: Focusing on Low-carbon Technology Innovations in Products and Solutions, Developing A Life-cycle Management

Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation (ZTE) has embedded its green ideas in different production and operational activities of the company. It has been carrying out life-cycle management of green products through the three major procedures of green infrastructure construction, low-carbon technology innovations in products and solutions as well as product packaging and transport.

 

In terms of green infrastructure, ZTE takes its self-developed chips as the source, and carries out green infrastructure deployment of products and solutions in the three major fields of green site, green data center and low carbon energy for the company's energy consuming products.

 

Green site: It has gradually evolved from macro stack dominated by conventional independent machine room into cabinet mode. Integration level will be further increased in the future by advancing cabinet mode to derrick mode to significantly reduce carbon emission.

 

Green data center: Green energy-saving technologies have been fully integrated to increase energy utilization rate from the three major perspectives of flexible energy use, thorough use of cold resources and smart management, resulting PUE of no greater than 1.2 in some regions. The implementation of prefabrication idea shortened the construction cycle by 40%; on-demand expansion reduced initial investment by 30%.

 

Low carbon energy: ZTE's intelligent PV system, which supplies green power to sites, machine rooms and data centers, has realized smooth lamination in all scenarios; mixed use, peak load shifting and other innovative functions of intelligent lithium battery along with shunting control, remote management and other functions of intelligent power supply have realized targeted and intelligent power supply, which further increased power usage efficiency.

 

As for low-carbon technology innovations in products and solutions, in face of the huge challenges from energy consumption of board card and complete machine manufacturing for RAN, 4G and 5G base stations, ZTE has replaced manual energy conservation by remote automated approaches, and deployed base station energy saving functions. Since deployment of energy saving approaches in this year, it has cumulatively saved more than 1.5 million KWh of electricity, which's equivalent to saving of 468 tons of coal and planting of 133,712 trees. In respect of optimization of product testing procedures, ZTE has added DOAS based on ambient air-cooling practice of the high temperature area. The system takes advantage of difference between indoor and outdoor temperature to replace air-conditioning refrigeration mode in transition seasons, and dissipates heat of aging environment inside glass rooms to reduce air conditioning energy consumption.

 

By targeting on innovations in the whole life cycle of green products, ZTE has successfully carried out green infrastructure deployment of products and solutions in the three major aspects of green site, green data center and low-carbon energy, improved energy consumption of board card and complete machine manufacturing for RAN, 4G and 5G base stations through remote automated approaches, and optimized product packaging, thus successfully realizing cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

 

 

PanGood Power: Resolving Development Dilemmas of Bus Industry Through Innovative Bus Capacity Solutions

Accompanied with the dramatic drop in bus ridership in recent years, the entire bus industry is facing development dilemmas. Buses of certain routes had high empty-loaded rate in off-peak hours, while reduction of departure frequency would lead to overlong waiting time and drop in quality of bus service. To this end, "large space and elastic carrying capacity" has become the key breakthrough point for bus-related technological innovations.

 

PanGood Power has introduced "BMT" carrying capacity solution in the field of new energy bus, i.e., wheel-side drive system with four airbags and independent suspensions. It replaced the conventional radial-flux machine with axial flux motor of small size, light weight and high efficiency, used distributed driving solution and independent suspension structure, and removed rigid driving axle, transmission shaft, main reducer and differential, thus reducing loss of transmission efficiency and impact of bridge on interior layout and space.

 

Wheel-side driving system with four airbags and independent suspensions

 

This system has upgraded the conventional bus model to a new generation of low floor city bus with metro like features of easy access, full-flat floor and wide aisle. Firstly, bus carrying capacity has been effectively enhanced. Benefited from the full-flat floor comes with wheel-side driving system, effective standing area of the whole bus increased significantly. For example, maximum passenger capacity of 8m "BMT" reaches 85 persons, which's equivalent to that of 10m conventional bus model, and that of 10m "BMT" is equivalent to that of 12m conventional bus model.

 

10.7m "BMT" 12m conventional bus
Maximum passenger capacity of 96 persons Maximum passenger capacity of 98 persons

Structure comparison between new BMT and conventional bus models

 

Secondly, PanGood's wheel-side drive system with four airbags and independent suspensions endows the "BMT" with a body structure entirely different from that of conventional bus, creating essentially safe use environment for passengers: the one-step boarding feature of the bus can facilitate easy access of senior citizens, children, the disabled and other vulnerable groups, making bus use more convenient and reducing safety hazards.

 

At last, assembly of the whole system is highly integrated, at the same time of provision of sufficient power output, transmission, transmission shaft and other parts have been removed for simplified mechanical transmission structure which improves the transmission efficiency of the bus and effectively reduces the weight of the bus, increasing the light-weight degree of the complete vehicle. With the same passenger capacity, "BMT" boasts smaller size, lighter weight and lower energy consumption, which effectively reduce operating cost.

 

By now, "BMT" has been used by King Long, Golden Dragon, Higer, CRRC, Zhongtong and other domestic mainstream OEMs, the number of announced bus models reached more than 60, and over 4,000 such buses have been put into operation in over 40 cities throughout the country, including Shanghai, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu. "BMT" plays a significant role in facilitation of energy conservation and emission reduction: on the premise of the same passenger capacity, the use of "BMT" solution can reduce bus weight by around 2-3 tons at production end, and reduce carbon footprint by approximately 4 tons; at operation end, it can reduce carbon emission and operating power consumption by about 120,000 tons and 26%-33% respectively on a yearly basis, and save approximately 15,000 kWh of electricity based on annual operating mileage of 70,000 km, which can realize effective optimization of operating cost while achieving energy conservation and carbon emission reduction. Lower carbon emission of the whole life cycle of vehicle can be realized through reduction of carbon footprint at production end as well as energy conservation and carbon emission reduction at operation end, which has demonstrative long-term effect on the realization of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals in the field of urban traffic.

 

 

Genertec: Multi-dimensional Green Innovation and Development of Series Energy Storage Projects

Under the context of further deepening of reform of Genertec International Holding Co., Ltd., China DC Technical Import & Export Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "CDC"), a wholly owned subsidiary of China National Technical Import & Export Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "CNTIC"), has become a new platform for integrated development of "Generation, Grid, Load and Storage" of new power system under Genertec, which focuses on innovativeness of design schemes, application scenarios and core technologies. CDC has developed Series Energy Storage Projects, including Genertec CNTIC 15MW/52MWh User End Energy Storage Project for CATL, Genertec CNTIC 6MW/12MWh User End Energy Storage Project for CATL-GAC and Genertec CNTIC 18.5MW/50MWh User End Energy Storage Project for CATL-SAIC. The aforesaid projects are situated in Jiangsu Province and Guangdong Province, and the total investment was around CNY 210 million.

 

Genertec CNTIC 15MW/52MWh User End Energy Storage Project for CATL

 

Series Energy Storage Projects are characterized by innovativeness of design schemes, application scenarios and core technologies. In respect of innovativeness of design schemes, Series Projects all use the lithium iron phosphate battery solution featured by long lifetime, high integration and high safety. Meanwhile, flexible modular designs can make products applicable to different application scenarios from industry and commerce to large scale energy storage, and facilitate project expansion. To build core competitiveness, energy storage related big data and smart management platform has been developed and used in projects to realize unattended operation of energy storage stations and output end of other new energies, and thus reduce operating and maintenance cost of the power plant. The smart operating and maintenance platform provides users with more efficient, safer and smarter energy storage solutions. Collection and analysis of operation data under different energy storage scenarios have accumulated substantial new energy data assets for the company, and laid a solid foundation for further exploration of value of data assets and facilitation of industrial innovations.

 

In terms of innovations in application scenarios, the Series Projects have expanded typical application scenarios like distributed new energies, micro-grid, big data centers, 5G base stations, charging facilities, industrial parks and other end users. The energy storage facilities have been directly built inside users' plants to develop the two-way adjustability of industrial loads based on energy storage technologies, and provide users' plants with energy management services.

 

As for innovations in core technologies, the Series Projects have adopted the liquid cooling technology and built the energy storage related big data and smart management platform. Liquid cooling technology has the features of high heat carrying capacity and high heat transfer efficiency, which perfectly solved air-cooling system's efficiency and economy related problems of large size, vulnerability to external environment as well as system safety. Liquid cooling system can be highly integrated with battery packs, so it requires smaller space, and is safer and more reliable. Meanwhile, the energy storage related big data and smart management platform developed simultaneously has been equipped with dynamic demand management technology for industrial and commercial scenarios as well as technology for compatibility and optimization of industrial and commercial mode and grid-side & demand-side response mode, which enable high standard digital and smart management of electric energy.

 

Development, implementation and innovation of Series Energy Storage Projects have improved CDC's competitive advantages in the segment of energy storage, and consolidated its market share in prime markets. Besides, accompanied with the boom of global energy storage market, these projects have also accumulated important achievements for exploration of international new energy markets and implementation of the "the Belt and Road Initiative".

 

 

CCDC: Commitment to Construction Related Technological Innovations and Vigorous Development of Industrial DfMA

China Construction (South Pacific) Development Co Pte Ltd (CCDC) places a high value on green, low carbon and sustainable development, and it has been making continuous investments and proactive innovations in the field of design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA). The company mainly realizes effective fabrication of M&E modules andPrefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction / Prefabricated Bathroom Unit (PPVC/PBU) Modules in plants through modularization and standardization, which can effectively use materials and resources, reduce material wastes, and thus promote green and sustainable development of construction industry.

 

CCDC has invested in and established a DfMA Center that covers an area of approximately 10,383 m2, and set up a dedicated M&E module and PPVC /PBU module production and R&D team, which give it complete technology and capacity for producing M&E module and PPVC /PBU module.

 

CCDC's DfMA Center

 

In terms of M&E modules, CCDC applied and developed a series of technologies for facilitation and optimization of M&E modular construction in its DfMA Center, and it mainly makes innovations in design, production and site installation of prefabricated M&E modules.

 

Design techniques of prefabricated M&E modules: The company has realized modular coordination of M&E pipelines. Based on initial layout of M&E plants and pipelines in the respective M&E BIMs, it takes full consideration of compliance to the related regulations, devices/pipelines' interfacing subsequent cables installation method and operation & maintenance space of pipeline valves and other accessories, and reduces space occupied by pipelines as well as the quantities of intersected areas and elbows to the greatest extent. Meanwhile, it has also improved frame structure design of integrated prefabricated M&E pipeline module, which guarantees conformity of size and weight of integrated M&E pipeline module to the construction criteria at different stages of fabrication, transport and installation as well as safety.

 

Production techniques of prefabricated M&E modules: The company has facilitated the fabrication of integrated M&E pipeline modules in DfMA Center. In comparison with conventional on-site installation method, prefabrication in plant boasts of numerous advantages of fast progress, high quality, safe installation environment and on-site manpower saving.

 

Plant module

 

Installation techniques of prefabricated M&E modules: The innovatively developed synchronous hoisting system has solved the problems of high manpower cost and tedious on-site manpower dispatching encountered in conventional construction method, and realized more efficient and safer installation.

 

Integrated M&E pipeline module and synchronous hoisting system

 

As for PPVC/PBU modules through establishment of standardized fitting-out works’ process in DfMA Center, CCDC guarantees completion of 85% of architectural and M&E fitting-out works within 7 days upon receipt of each structural shell and conformity to the requirements of Building and Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore. CCDC has established a standardized production process and professional management team, and obtained 3 concrete PPVC IPAs issued by BCA. CCDC totally has 11 PPVC projects completed or under construction, making it one of the most prolific contractors working on PPVC projects in Singapore.

 

PPVC/PBU production line

 

Through establishment of DfMA Center, CCDC has provided an omnidirectional platform for application and development of DfMA, and consolidated its leading position in Singapore's DfMA industry. CCDC will continue to make inputs, initiate and develop more green, low-carbon, environment friendly, energy-saving and sustainable building technologies, and promote them, thus contributing more to green development of the industry.