September 19, 2021
KT to take the lead in ESG management with ABC (AI, Big Data, Cloud)
Case Study By
Dr. Hyeonmo Ku
Chief Executive Officer, Korea Telecom
State of Broadband 2021
KT declared a transformation into a digital platform company (Digico) and implementing ABC technologies to solve environmental and social issues by promoting ESG management.
Environment
KT has been reducing Greenhouse Gas(GHG) by optimizing network, A/C and heating system, converting vehicles to electric, and developing AI to save more than 10% of energy. KT established a GHG monitoring system in 2018 and is reducing 40,000-50,000 tons of greenhouse gases annually. KT was the first MNO in Korea to enter the CDP Platinum Club by putting the company name up on the CDP Hall of Fame for four consecutive years.
KT-MEG (Micro Energy Grid) is an energy management platform. Through an AI energy big data analysis engine E-brain, it can predict, manage, diagnosis and control power generation from production to transaction.
2021 is the first year of implementing RE100[1]. Independent six base stations that will run solely on renewable energy will be built as a pilot test and KT plans to expand power generation facilities for renewable energy as well.
One of cases that affected daily life for instance…
In 2017, KT started the Air Map Korea project to solve the nationwide concern, the micro dust. Using KT’s ICT infrastructure (power poles, base stations, public telephone booths, KT offices), up to 2,000 air quality measuring devices were installed. By securing micro dust data from the height of a person, KT provided micro dust information to all citizens through the application and IPTV in real-time. |
Social
‘KT e-mentoring’ based on KT education platform provides jobs for college students(mentors) and reduces learning gap for middle school students(mentees). ‘KT Soaring Shop’ provides information of commercial area analysis with sales tips to small business based on AI and big data. For ‘Caring about you’ campaign, AI was used to find the voices for the hearing impaired.
‘Gwanghwamun One Team’, brings together the capabilities of the government, social organizations, and companies to take a lead in building an ecosystem that solves problems in the local community by utilizing the various resources & capabilities. ‘Warm Hearted Technology Plus’, a social enterprise promotion provides funding, 1:1 tech and management consulting for selected companies that could create social value.
Governance
KT implemented the “e-Voting System” for shareholders’ convenient and transparent exercise. The board of directors is operated by external (eight out of eleven) directors which exceeds the majority of the commercial law requirements. The CEO and the chairman of the board are separated and the chairman of the board and the committee are appointed among external directors for the independent management.
KT maintained A+ in the ESG evaluation conducted annually by the Korea Corporate Governance Agency for listed companies. In the global evaluation, KT was selected as No.1 group in the ‘2020 UN SDGs Business Index’ announced by the ‘UN SDGs Association’ for the second year in a row.
[1] Renewable 100%: 100% of the power used by the company is procured from renewable energy such as solar and wind power
