Sustainability demands progress on several fronts at once. For example, societies must reduce factory energy use, roll out EVs, and ensure that communications equipment can operate off-grid to extend educational opportunities to children in remote areas.

China-based telecoms giant ZTE pursues all of these. CDP, a non-profit that runs an environmental disclosure system, has included the company on its CDP A list for the last three years.

ZTE’s progress against ambitious goals for carbon emissions reduction and digital inclusion is detailed in its 2025 Sustainability Report.

ZTE’s Chief International Ecosystem Representative, CHEN Zhiping, says ZTE has always viewed sustainability as an essential part of its DNA rather than a temporary initiative, with the company reporting on its progress for the last 18 years. Even so, they add, the business has had to adjust its strategy “to keep pace with the evolving global landscape.”

The report shows how ESG runs through the corporation from board level down to the individual teams responsible for executing the strategy, and outward into the supplier and customer ecosystem. It takes a double materiality assessment approach to sustainability, weighing each topic on both its financial impact to the company and its broader social and environmental consequences.

ZTE’s Digital Green Path strategy underpins these efforts across four dimensions that target science-based sustainability goals: corporate operations, supply chain, digital infrastructure, and industry empowerment.

On the technology side, the telco’s Connectivity + Computing strategy ties AI and ICT together. It says that AI transformation depends on infrastructure that spans both connectivity and compute, and must do so as sustainably as possible.

That premise feeds into ZTE’s All in AI, AI in All strategy, which envisages AI transforming both industrial and consumer technology.

As CHEN Zhiping claims, “ZTE deploys AI aggressively to cut emissions and improve resource efficiency, while simultaneously reducing AI’s own footprint through energy-efficient design, green infrastructure, supplier engagement and governance, and beyond.”

That approach is essential, as AI itself poses a serious sustainability challenge. The buildout is already absorbing huge and rising amounts of energy. The International Energy Agency reported this year that electricity consumption from datacenters is set to double by 2030, with “power use from those focused on AI … poised to triple.”

AI risk and opportunity

ZTE’s own transition risk analysis acknowledges that the expansion of AI datacenters “poses serious challenges for most operators in achieving carbon neutrality by 2030.”

That makes power management and longer-term sustainability central to product design. An integrated approach to power efficiency across compute and communications infrastructure lets datacenter operators and telcos alike extract more value from their investments and meet their own ESG obligations.

At the same time, says CHEN Zhiping, “AI is a powerful enabler of sustainability – helping industries forecast renewable energy supply, optimized energy consumption, monitor emissions, and improve efficiency across the value chain.”

ZTE is bolstering this with a dedicated carbon-reduction program for its computing products, alongside work to refine AI algorithms and computing-networking products.

In 2025, the Sustainability Report shows, the corporation installed the first batch of immersion liquid-cooled datacenters in China, for China Telecom Intelligent Cloud Base Huailai Park. The installation will deliver in a PUE of 1.15 and save more than 1.1 million kWh of electricity per year. This site is expected to be a model for other datacenter developments in the country.

When it comes to its networking products, it said a combination of improved battery designs, dynamic energy saving technologies, and network search optimization for communication modules, means its latest flagship mobile phones achieved an approximately 30% improvement in overall battery life compared with the previous generation of flagships.

While ZTE’s sustainability strategy focuses on measurable science-based targets, it does not ignore the human dimension. The Sustainability Report shows that ZTE treats digital inclusion as inseparable from its engineering focus on green outcomes.

Wireless and communications technologies widen inclusion in their own right, particularly by extending educational opportunities into remote rural areas.

There’s plenty to play for. CHEN Zhiping points out that more than a quarter of the world remains unconnected, but raw connectivity alone isn’t enough. ZTE asks whether a solution is affordable, stable, and accessible, which means weighing how quickly and easily technology can be deployed and, increasingly, whether it can run off-grid on sustainable power.

In practice, that includes developing local telco talent in Vietnam through university collaborations and supporting schools in the country. More immediately, ZTE deployed communications hubs and emergency supplies in Myanmar after the country experienced a 7.9 magnitude earthquake.

Those human-focused efforts also deliver measurable outcomes. In 2025, with its registered volunteers surpassing 20,000, ZTE implemented 89 public welfare projects across 15 countries and regions, which directly benefited more than 100,000 people.

Supply side solutions

Sustainability depends on ecosystems, and businesses sit inside them. ZTE puts considerable effort into helping its suppliers improve their sustainability.

“We set clear ESG requirements for suppliers via contractual clauses and regular audits,” says CHEN Zhiping. The corporation also provides training and guidance on carbon accounting and emission reduction.

In 2025, ZTE completed ESG audits for 270 suppliers, while more than 450 supplier representatives attended ESG training sessions.

The results are measurable. The latest Sustainability Report shows that in 2025, ZTE’s electricity purchases fell 16.3 percent against 2021, for cost savings of almost CNY100 million. Overall energy efficiency, measured in tons of coal per CNY100 million of revenue, improved 28.39 percent. Operating carbon emissions fell 46 percent, with a compound annual reduction rate of 14.3 percent.

Reductions on this scale require attention to every part of the business. At the Shanghai R&D center, ZTE upgraded the chiller plant, swapped legacy chillers for high-efficiency magnetic levitation models, and installed matching cooling towers and pumps. The work boosted the plant’s energy efficiency ratio and delivered an overall energy saving rate of 46 percent. More broadly, carbon assessments on more than 240 products gave it full coverage across product categories.

At the other end of the scale, ZTE’s green factory approach cut energy consumption per unit of output by 22.1 percent across its five manufacturing bases. Green logistics means its Chinese warehouses rely on 100 percent electric forklifts, proof of delivery is 100 percent electronic in China, and 20 percent of domestic last-mile delivery uses “new energy” vehicles.

Other strategies are more prosaic, such as powering down R&D environments during idle periods. And “extreme energy-saving measures” during short holidays saved a cumulative 820,000 kWh in 2025.

The targets ahead are demanding. They include cutting scope one emissions (directly owned and controlled) and scope two emissions (indirect emissions from purchased energy) to under half their 2021 levels by 2030. ZTE also promises a matching reduction in scope three emissions (all other indirect emissions that it does not directly control) without raising the total. By 2050, it aims to reduce total emissions, including operations and the value chain, by 90 percent against 2021, with the remainder offset or removed.

So far, ZTE has cut scope one and two emissions by 46 percent. In 2025, absolute emissions across the full lifecycle of terminal products fell by 3.05 percent.

Every business will face sustainability challenges over the coming years. As CHEN Zhiping explains, ZTE intends to use advanced technologies, including AI, to accelerate the green transformation, build and upgrade digital infrastructure, and promote digital inclusion.

But one company can only do so much. To meet the global challenge, ZTE says collective action will be needed, spanning government, business and other stakeholders.

When it comes to AI, “Key priorities include establishing unified global standards to measure AI’s resource and carbon footprints, rolling out strict AI governance and ethical guardrails,” says she.

And there will have to be a broader scaling up of renewable energy and low-carbon tech for computing systems, and maturing circular models for AI hardware. ZTE’s sustainability strategy may have turned 18. But the hard work is just beginning.

Sponsored by ZTE.

In 1839, J.M.W. Turner painted The Fighting Temeraire. The old warship, once a hero of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, glides like a ghost across the canvas, towed by a small steam tug belching smoke on its final voyage to the ship-breakers. The image shows a clear moment of change: sail giving way to steam, and with it, a major shift in power. The ship relied on timber, rope, canvas, and Britain’s seafaring towns. The tug depended on coal mines and iron foundries that supplied machine shops in the Midlands. Turner showed the tension of this time, when new technology changed who held power.

By Turner’s time, the United States had already defeated Britain’s navy in two wars—one for liberty on land, another for freedom of the seas. The 13 colonies used new technology in creative ways to win their freedom, and by keeping up with innovation, they managed to defend their freedom. Now, as the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary, we can ask: What does it really mean for a country to be independent?

We tend to focus on how nations and individuals defend freedom but rarely turn that focus to the tools and systems that sustain freedom. Declaring independence is only the beginning: Independence must still be engineered.

Forging freedom

Long before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775, Britain had drawn the lines of conflict through technology. The Wool Act of 1699 choked colonial textile exports. The Hat Act of 1732 crushed local hat-making. The Iron Act of 1750 forbade finished iron goods. Each statute tightened the knot: Colonial capability existed only at Britain’s discretion. The Boston Tea Party may have been a loud response, but resistance also took subtler, more empowering forms. At a 1769 Virginia ball, more than a hundred women arrived in homespun gowns. Every thread was defiance.

When war came, everyday tradespeople pivoted to the fight. Farmers turned plowshares into gun barrels, while clockmakers turned their precision skills to making firing mechanisms. By 1777, two weapons production models had emerged—centralized sites like the Springfield Armory that could produce high-quality guns in large quantities, and household workshops that were more agile and could meet local needs. In parallel, the new nation developed an equally important source of supplies and support: France sent gunpowder and loans and eventually opened a second naval front in 1781, which proved as decisive as any weapon.

After the war, the young republic pursued industrial strength with the same resolve it had shown in battle. In 1789, Samuel Slater arrived from England with textile-spinning technology that he’d memorized, sowing the seeds of U.S. manufacturing, whose early growth rested on domestic cotton, slave labor, and copied techniques. By 1816, gun manufacturer Simeon North’s milling machines were producing interchangeable metal parts, allowing the armed forces to cannibalize parts. In 1822, Thomas Blanchard’s copying lathe automated the shaping of gunstocks. In the 1830s, the federal government imposed tariffs that shielded infant industries, fulfilling Alexander Hamilton’s vision for industrial policy: Build capacity first, then compete.

At the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, American revolvers and reapers with swappable parts stunned international observers. By the 1860s, land-grant colleges were spreading technical education across the nation. Engineering moved into the mainstream, from niche to national necessity, driving broad, though uneven, prosperity. As the Industrial Revolution bloomed, the early U.S. focus on industrial capacity via farms, factories, and formidable wealth positioned the country to compete with the most advanced industrial powers in the world.

The right and responsibility to repair

For nearly two centuries, that ethos endured, with government-guided infrastructure and markets deciding the details. But around the U.S. bicentennial, in 1976, a conviction took hold across party lines. Finance began to outrank fabrication, and Wall Street prioritized futures contracts over companies owning the factories that made up their supply chains. Domestic factories closed or moved offshore, and companies turned to just-in-time manufacturing and shipping, ostensibly as a way to save on costs. Shipbuilding felt this shift as much as any industry. Shipyards closed, and suppliers of specialized castings and components disappeared along with them, as did skilled technical workers who retired without replacement. Now the U.S. Navy struggles to build submarines fast enough to replace its aging fleet.

Other changes took hold, among them the idea that the company that builds your tractor or medical equipment could prevent you from fixing it yourself. Invasive “terms of service” prevented customers from reaching for a wrench, instead allowing companies to keep reaching into customers’ pockets. These changes are symptoms of both structural and infrastructural fragility. When we lose the ability to understand and sustain the systems we rely on, we lose control—bit by bit.

RELATED: Why We Must Fight for the Right to Repair Our Electronics

No nation can build everything alone, of course. From hand-forged muskets to finely printed microchips, the sovereignty etched into our tools demands a prudent calculus: what to make at home, what and with whom to trade. Engineering is how a nation keeps its independence alive. Independence requires both the courage to innovate and the stewardship to maintain what has been built. The American Revolution was itself an act of engineering—daring in vision and deliberate in pairing anvil and alliance. Generations later, can a nation that cannot see its own dependencies, build and maintain its critical tools, or repair what breaks still call itself free?

Turner’s Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, completed three years after The Fighting Temeraire, captures this part of the story. Sea and sky dissolve into a churning vortex around the ship. Turner claimed he had himself lashed to the ship’s mast for four hours so that he could paint the sensation of standing inside a system too vast and tangled to comprehend. A nation that loses sight of what it depends on stands there too: lashed to nothing except the churn.