Action from Alibaba ESG, look at "the value above business"

"Extreme weather this summer makes everyone really feel that climate change is not far away from us."

Alibaba, born in 1999, has to work hard to move towards 102 years, which happens to be over three centuries. Recently, Zhang Yong wrote a letter to the company's employees, the beginning of the number, that is, the question: we need to go healthily and sustainable for 102 years. We must deal with the relationship with the environment, the relationship with the society, and the company's long -term governance Project.

What kind of company can be called a good company? How should Alibaba get along with the world? When the times are questioned, the enterprise responds.

In the letter, the chairman of Alibaba, who has always decided to decide, gave the answer: creating the value above business. ESG is an action framework that solves a series of challenges.

[Note] ESG: The abbreviation of English Environmental (environment), Social (society), and Governance refers to a positive response to the concept of sustainable development by incorporating environmental, social and governance factors into investment decisions and corporate operations. The way of investment and management.

On August 29th, Alibaba Group officially released the "ENVIRONMENTAL and Governance Report", which shows the thinking and actions of a series of issues such as environmental, balanced development, corporate governance.

ESG is an international evaluation system. It measures the investment concepts and specific practices of the corporate environment, social benefits, and governance performance rather than financial reports, and gradually take root in China.

Enterprises need to create profits, but the mission of the enterprise cannot stop profit.

Economist Cos said that companies were born due to social costs. In other words, the organizational form of an enterprise has to solve socio -economic problems from the beginning. The value of ESG seeking to create business is actually the essence of returning to the enterprise. ESG should be a ruler around value, responsibility and risk. "I hope the public will understand and understand Alibaba through two reports in the future: one is a financial report and the other is an ESG report." Said Zhang Yongru, chairman of Alibaba's board of directors.

According to Ma Liang, a researcher at the National Development and Strategic Research Institute of Renmin University of China and a professor of the School of Public Management, the ESG report released by Alibaba not only draws on the international sustainable development target framework of the United Nations, but also integrates Chinese characteristics such as rural revitalization. Policy elements also reflect the thinking and actions of digital platform enterprises "the value above business". The Ali ESG report deeply explains the new direction of corporate social responsibility in the new era in the three dimensions of environment, society and governance. The indicators are diverse, rich in content, detailed data, and vivid cases. It interprets ESG and provides a model for evaluation and disclosure of similar companies.

Energy issues are connected to every enterprise

In 2004, the ESG concept was clearly proposed in the UN global contract plan. At that time, it was an extension of the concept of corporate social responsibility. Of course, it is not a new concept. It originally originated in Europe and the United States in the late industrial revolution.

At that time, people believed that in addition to pursuing the maximum profit, a company should also consider interesting parties including consumers, employees, communities, governments, and environment, and cannot ignore social responsibility.

Some industry experts believe that ESG allows enterprises to gradually measure social benefits from the financial indicators to comprehensively measure social benefits, and gradually become a investment orientation for financial and social income.

At present, my country's ESG belongs to the initial stage and is still exploring its connotation and extension. But in general, China is in line with the world in terms of green environmental protection.

2021 is the beginning of the "Fourteenth Five -Year Plan", and it is also a key year for promoting pollution -reduced carbon -reduction coordinated efficiency and promoting comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development. Energy -saving and consumption reduction is solidly advanced, and unit GDP energy consumption decreases by 2.7%year -on -year; clean energy consumption has developed rapidly, and the proportion of consumption such as natural gas and water nuclear landscapes has reached 25.3%, an increase of 1 percentage point year -on -year; A trillion kWh, accounting for 29.8%of the electricity consumption of the whole society; the output of green products has grown rapidly, and the output of new energy vehicles and solar cells increased by 145.6%and 42.1%year -on -year ...

This summer, the high temperature with a rare history, the power load also reached a new high, and energy problems are placed in a more urgent and important position.

In the situation of tight energy supply last year and restarted coal power in many European countries, the development of non -chemical energy energy in my country has remained unabated, and the proportion of total energy consumption has increased by 0.7 percentage points, from 15.9%to 16.6%.

Energy issues are connected to every enterprise. According to the Alibaba ESG report, in 2021, Alibaba ranked first among Chinese companies renewable energy buyers; fiscal 2022, through energy structure transformation, carbon reduction is 619,944 tons, and 21.6%of Alibaba Cloud's use of electricity is clean and low -carbon. The annual average energy use efficiency (PUE) of the data center reaches 1.247, which is the leading level of Asia. Compared with the self -built data center, users use the cloud computing services provided by Ali's own data centers in China to achieve 85.5%of carbon emission reduction; build a "88 carbon account" system to help more than 20 million users participate in carbon reduction daily. In July of this year, we jointly launched the "Carbon Friendship Action" with 19 companies in the consumer field ... "In December last year, we released the first" Carbon Neutral Action Report "and made our own commitments to cope with climate change. These commitments require the efforts of several generations of Ali people. We believe that only the continuous efforts of generations can bring real changes ... Of course, we must also balance the relationship between development and carbon reduction, so that low -carbon actions and low -carbon actions and Long -term development is accompanied. Not only that, we also integrate more extensive environmental issues such as water, natural resources, and biodiversity into the overall planning of the future. "Zhang Yong's report on Alibaba's ESG reported in the future.

The birth of the birth of good companies

The essence of ESG is to pursue the sustainable development of people and nature, man and society.

For platform -type enterprises, the premise of reaching this essence is needed to build a trust with participants from all parties, and to support the development of employees internally. Based on this Development issues.

The coordinated development of commercial ecology also means responsibilities to bring a better life to consumers, as well as high -quality development of small and medium -sized enterprises.

In addition, the tolerance and toughness of the ecological community should be constructed, and the public welfare of people's participation in alleviating social issues should be promoted by step by step.

The seven elements, Alibaba's image into seven -petal flower, within the company, is a natural endogenous relationship, and increasingly becoming an important criterion for measuring whether it is a good company globally.

In other words, whether it is the 17 sustainable development goals from the United Nations or the many strategies proposed by China, it contains the same real logic:

Regardless of what kind of enterprise, no matter the size of the enterprise, it is always necessary to balance the relationship between local interests and overall interests, long -term interests and short -term interests, economic benefits and social benefits. Especially for large enterprises, it is necessary to echo the national governance from the bottom up to form a joint force. The so -called good companies are born in such efforts.

Platform technology company empower social responsibility

"ESG standards with Chinese characteristics should be established as soon as possible and actively participated in global governance." Industry experts appealed.

Internationally point of view, developed economies such as Europe, the United States, and Japan have established a relatively complete ESG ecosystem, and established a systematic ESG disclosure framework and disclosure standards. For China, whether it is ESG's evaluation standards or ESG operations, it is in its infancy.

In fact, although ESG's evaluation standards originated from international, their actions are often specific and localized. Whether it is environmental protection, resolving social unevenness, or promoting corporate governance, a road that is more in line with national conditions is also in practice.

From the perspective of ESG action, the platform company's advancement of the industry's ecology is a new connotation that China is undergoing.

China's Internet and platform companies are one of the smallest gaps with the world. The latest research achievements of the economic innovation and governance group of Peking University Platform "Platform Economy: Innovation, Governance and Prosperity" shows that from a global perspective, the economic development of the Chinese platform is in a relatively leading position. The indicators include the number, market value, and transaction scale of platform companies. Although the development speed has slowed in the past two years, in general, China's platform economic development has achieved extraordinary achievements.

The value of the platform is not only connected to the main body of commercial transactions, but also the main body of social responsibility. It is also from this perspective that Alibaba's ESG report proposes that platform technology companies can reach and connect many participants in multiple parties to promote collaborative cooperation between them. This means that the platform can become a carrier for the healthy progress of participants, practice the social responsibility that transcends the enterprise itself, and promote social progress in a scale and systematically. Therefore, "to enlarge the influence of platform technology companies to empower social responsibility."

In the field of consumption, a low -carbon ecology connected by the platform is forming. In July 2022, 19 companies such as Alibaba, Procter & Gamble, Yili, and Mri jointly launched a "Carbon Reduction Action" plan to promote the large -scale development and scientific measurement of low -carbon products from the product design link; Low -carbon logistics is embedded in the supply chain; use low -carbon marketing to increase consumers' awareness of low -carbon products.

In the field of energy conservation, Alibaba launched the carbon emission optimization accounting platform "Energy Consumption" to data data with energy, through refined operations, excavate the inefficient links in the production process, and gives efficiency suggestions. Helping enterprises to plan to formulate self -produced and self -use clean energy strategies, and the average energy saving rate brought by the algorithm is 10%. As of March 31, 2022, about 1,700 companies have begun to use "energy consumption".

It can also be seen that the power of Alibaba's platform to create opportunities for more than tens of millions of small, medium and micro enterprises, and help bring more than 60 million employment opportunities. Among them, they especially help those who are in a relatively weak group to create employment opportunities, especially in particular Women and disabled people. Last year, 70%of Alibaba's newly added Chinese new user groups came from low -line cities and villages. In fiscal 2022, Taobao provided services for 305,000 obstacles to users, and invested more than 120 billion yuan in technical related fields, in China Help build the most active open source technology community ...

How to create the value above business?

At present, the ESG operation of domestic enterprises is developing in an orderly manner. From Alibaba ESG operation, observe "value above business", we may get some preliminary conclusions:

First, the essence of ESG is to create the value above business. The value of the so -called business is the responsibility of sharing with the society outside of the finances, the risks of sharing with the society, and the way out.

Second, ESG is not a concept, but a specific governance. To some extent, it needs to be the first project of the enterprise like the financial report. The main person in charge of the enterprise needs to invest in this issue of sustainable development and achieve higher sustainable development structure in the enterprise;

Third, ESG does not simply express social value and responsibility slogan, but needs to be fully integrated into commercial design. Only by turning social responsibility into the core elements of commercial design and through science and technology and business innovation can sustainable development drive the development of enterprises.

Fourth, ESG is not a company's single fight, but a collective action. Only by actively cooperating with all stakeholders and exerting the value of participants' ecology can we achieve common development.

Fifth, ESG is not only a regular study and opening up, but also a localization and localization of action. The effective operation of ESG needs to docking international standards, as well as the reality of China, and the formation of Chinese standards, Chinese connotations and Chinese solutions.

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