On Saturday 16th April, the annual Eco-Warriors conference took place. This was due to take place in person, however due to the lockdown it was moved online.
The Eco-Warriors conference takes place every year and the purpose of it is to educate young people about climate change and sustainability. In previous conferences students have been empowered with tools to allow them to advocate for sustainable actions in their community and lives, both inside and outside of school.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Carbon footprint of the Internet” which is particularly applicable to their current lives as all the students involved are being educated online. During the conference they heard from a range of leading technology experts in China.
The first speaker was Fengqi Zhang from Microsoft China and is the Microsoft GCR Sustainability Community Lead. Fengqi co-founded Microsoft Sustainability Community in China, to connect those who care about the environment and are willing to use technology to solve pressing issues like climate change. Fengqi spent 9 years living and working in different countries, including 5 years in Chile, where she witnessed the falling glacier in Antarctica due to the warming climate, which has motivated her work. During her presentation, she described the impact of internet usage on global emissions and discussed the ways in which Microsoft are working towards improving this, largely through the funding of initiatives through their climate innovation fund.
Yifei Wang-G9
“I enjoyed learning about how our daily lives can affect the environment and I am going to try to curtail my internet usage by 2 hours every day”
Our students then heard from Stefan Berder, Founder of Gams – an environmental monitoring and building sustainability start up. During his portion he outlined the features of the “cloud” and data centres, walking us through the challenges and opportunities presented, such as the re-using of waste heat.
Lori Luo – G6
“I enjoyed learning about how fast our tech industry is growing and how there are some very serious problems that we weren’t aware of. I also learnt how a surprising amount of carbon dioxide and water is needed to cool the servers.”
The next session was led by Ellen Wu (General manager) and Sharon Sun (Senior engineer) for RESETcarbon, they discussed the impact of gender equality in science, technology and innovation for climate change.
Students also heard from Dai Qing, the Senior Program Director, Tencent Carbon Neutrality Lab in Beijing. She also works under the newly established Sustainable Social Value Organisation of Tencent. Qing was previously the Climate and Environmental Policy Advisor at the British Embassy in Beijing. During her talk, she outlined the sustainability aims, the enormous progress that has already been made in this area as well as the long-term goals.
Michelle Liu – G7
“I really enjoyed learning about the efforts that the websites we commonly use put into reducing their carbon emissions.”
Lastly, students heard from Max Song (SAS Puxi ’10 graduate),Founder and CEO of Carbonbase, a climate change startup with expertise in data science, loT and blockchain technologies. He described the work that they do with companies to explore sustainable business models and blew our students minds with the vast potential the Metaverse and NFTs have to generate social impact.
Eva Ye – G9
“I learnt how Metaverse and NFT projects are stimulating demands for reducing carbon emission in real life (also how even PPT designs could be optimized for energy efficiency!) and I will try and use technology from companies that are working towards creating a sustainable solution, and also reduce my usage of electronic devices. I also want to learn and do more research so that I can help spread the message of how we can help with the problems we are facing to even more people.”