TED Talks Daily - Sunday Pick: Tech Solutions (#3): How one of China’s biggest tech companies is tackling carbon removal (with Xu Hao)

Episode Date: November 30, 2025

Tencent is one of China’s biggest tech companies, running the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat and the world’s largest video game vendor. Now, it’s also an up-and-coming force in the field of carbon removal. Xu Hao, the vice president of Sustainable Social Value at Tencent, oversees two of those initiatives: the Carbon Neutrality Lab and CarbonX. He sits down with Sherrell Dorsey, host of the “TED Tech” podcast, to talk about how megacorporation can help advance the climate movement. He also explores the current state of carbon removal technology and how Tencent’s video games are becoming an unlikely source of climate education for hundreds of thousands of people. This is episode three of a four-part series airing this month on TED Tech, where host and climate tech journalist Sherrell Dorsey speaks with climate leaders on the technology sparking a greener, more equitable future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Sunday TED Talks Daily listeners. I'm Elise Hugh, and today we have a special episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective handpicked by us for you. This time it's an episode from the TED Tech mini-series on how technology can help to generate a greener and more equitable future. Have you ever wondered what video games and climate tech have in common? Well, in today's episode, host Shirel Dorsey sits down with Shu Hao, who runs sustainability initiatives at Tencent. Tencent is one of China's largest technological companies. It's behind the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat, the world's largest video game vendor, and is now an up-and-coming force in carbon removal. They discussed the role mega corporations can play in the climate movement, where carbon technology currently is,

and how Tencent's video games are an unlikely and exciting source of climate education. education for hundreds of thousands. TED Tech is a show that features talks and conversations that explore the many ways in which technology impacts society. If you want to hear more insights like this, listen to TED Tech wherever you get your podcasts and learn about the TED Audio Collective at audiocollective.ted.com. Now on to the episode. Welcome to TED Tech, a podcast from TED. I'm your host, Shirel Dorsey.

Today, we're continuing our special mini-series about climate solutions and the technology that can lead us into a greener, more equitable future. Across four episodes, we're bringing you conversations from TED's countdown climate summit in Nairobi, Kenya, where some of the world's greatest visionaries shared cutting-edge solutions to the ongoing climate crisis. It's the defining challenge of our time. So how will we meet it? Before we dive in today's conversation, let's pause to consider a sobering fact. Even if we halted all emissions today, the carbon already in our atmosphere would continue to warm the planet for decades to come.

That's why the world's attention is increasingly turning to carbon removal and why leaders, like Dr. Shu Howe, are so pivotal in shaping the solutions of tomorrow. Dr. Howe serves as vice president of sustainable social value at Tencent, one of the world's largest technology firms and the company behind WeChat with over a billion active users. In this role, he leads Tencent's Carbon Neutrality Lab and directs Carbon X, the company's ambitious platform investing in breakthrough carbon removal and decarbonization technology. particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, like cement, steel, and chemicals. Under his leadership, Tencent isn't just focused on reducing its own operational emissions.

It's actively funding and accelerating early-stage high-risk climate solutions through its lab, accelerator, and infrastructure tracks, moving ideas from concept to commercialization. Today, we'll explore with Dr. Howell, what it is. takes to push carbon removal technologies from promising prototypes to real-world impact. And because it's important to challenge and contextualize these efforts, we'll also ask, why should a company like Tencent know more for social platforms and gaming than heavy industry be so invested in carbon removal? What role do tech giants truly have to play in the global climate movement? It's an important conversation at a pivotal time, and I'm thrilled to

welcome Dr. Shu Howe to help us make sense of what's next. Before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors. So Dr. Howe, first of all, welcome. Yes, it's my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Carbon X specifically focuses on hard-to-abate industries and technologies like what's called carbon capture utilization storage or CCUS.

What do you see as the single biggest misconception or challenge that needs to be overcome for some of these carbon removal technologies to really achieve widespread adoption and really significantly impact global emissions? The single challenge they face is actually they cost too much today, right? So we really need to push the technology forward so that they can reduce their cost and they can scale up. Then they can play a big role. So at the moment, we see a lot of the technology are actually coming out of the laboratory in a research institute and become startups or actually integrated into many of the existing hard-to-abate sectors and begin to make a material impact. By material impact, I mean, okay, in the lab, you're probably working on kilograms or a few tens,

and then going to the industry, you're working with at least 1,010 or 10,000, or millions of tens. Then it is really helping some of the industry decarbonize. That is important because we have to have the option out there so that the industry know, okay, I can choose this pathway. Otherwise, let's say if the technology is not there, you probably have some, what is so-called technology locked-in effect. As you choose a relatively higher carbon technological pathway, you build a plant, that plant will be there for 15, 20, 30 years.

Then the emission is almost locked in. And I love that you speak to the ecosystem at large because the more investment, the more time put in, the advancement, the lower the costs. But that opportunity still has to be there. And there is the Carbon X initiative, which funds projects across the labs. Can you share some examples for maybe one of the winning cohorts from this project

that embodies this idea of tech for good and this vision around what this kind of innovative approach or potential can be to really scale? So when we launched the first round of carbon X, what we found very interesting is look at all the winning startup cohort. Most of them are actually doing carbon utilization. in China. And then we think, okay, why is the reason? It's probably because, number one, we don't have a carbon price that's covered most part of the economy. We have our carbon market, but it's only covering part of the economy. It's expanding to cover most of the economic

activities pretty soon, but at the moment, that didn't cover that part. And secondly, carbon utilization in terms of so-called MRV issues, measurement reporting, and verification, it's complicated. Because how do you calculate if I use one ton of carbon dioxide from a chimney, how much carbon abatement I have? It's technical and it's complicated. As a result, these guys have to compete head-to-head with the fossil fuel alternative, whether it's make a plastic or make calcium carbonate or make building materials cement.

They have to compete head-to-head. with the fossil fuel alternative without the price on carbon. And then the good thing about it, or exciting, there are actually much more than what we expected startups. They can actually compete with the fossil fuel alternative. They can make cement using steel slug and carbon dioxide at a similar cost or sometimes even less than the fossil fuel alternative. They can make organic material, they can make chemicals using carbon dioxide cheaper than the traditional way.

They are actually making sustainable aviation fuel. Today is still a bit more expensive, but we actually see a viable pathway to really drive down the cost so that they can be competitive one day. So you don't need a carbon price. If we look at electric vehicle, leasing battery, solar and wind, they are now competing head. to head with the fossil fuel alternative. And then if we look at what are still happening in the laboratory, these guys are probably the next wave. So if we get waves and waves of waves of these emerging low-carbon technologies, then we are really pushing the decarbonization agenda forward. That's really excites us.

It excites me that you're excited about this because I think I probably speak for everyone who's listening in now that we can hear just the enthusiasm and the possibility and the opportunity. And I think so far in this space, it's felt so out of reach to really solve these major challenges. So how do you envision Tencent leveraging some of your strengths in AI and data and cloud computing, particularly for this space of advancing carbon removal and emissions reductions and really speaking to some of those solutions that you're excited about? Yeah. So we just talked a lot about kind of physical low-carbon technology, right? As a technology company, the other half is sort of digital technology.

So our approach is see how we can leverage the digital technology to actually either help to how to abate sectors be more effective, efficient. Most likely, in many of the cases, being more efficient is actually being lower carbon for them, simply because energy actually is a big part, big share of their operating cost. or using digital technology doing something you can't actually do without it. So conceptually, right, digital technology actually improves the ability to doing everything much more granular.

If I'm an operator in a plant, with digital capability, you can do almost everything in a split of a second. Nowadays, with the development of AI, machine learning, you can almost envision that old plant will be running much more granular, which means the management of the plant will be much more efficient. As a result, they will produce same amount of output using much less resources. So we call it resource productive operations. And then with a lot of the innovation in the digital space, then you can achieve additional things. For example, there is the concept called virtual power plant. So with more renewable

on the grid, flexibility becomes a scarce resource. So we get flexibility, for example, from batteries or energy storage facilities. But that costs a lot of CAPEX. You need to buy a lot of batteries, you put it on the grid, so that you are flexible. But then you can try to match the generation and the production of the electricity and the use of the electricity. more precisely so that you actually need less battery. So that is so-called virtual power plant. Virtual means if I want you to so-called generate, the user actually use less.

If I want you to consume, then the user use more. That can almost only be done by digital technology because we really need a lot of data, a lot of optimization and also split of a second reactions. So that cannot be done manually, can only be done digitally. That's only one example. We have so many examples on similar approach. So that is also a big part of the innovation space.

And then finally, of course, we have to solve the additional energy consumption as a result of all the development of digital technology, more data centers, more electricity consumption. But the solution is already out there. We just use more renewables. Right. So at Tencent, we have this policy saying, okay, any additional energy we use, we will use on renewables. And any renewable we actually get, we use renewables on additional renewable projects. So we're not only pushing our own decarbonization agenda. We also want to help the renewable industries to get more capacity in the grid. Yeah, and I think that's important to highlight because there is a growing concern about the emissions and the energy utility of the data centers and also where they are being established, how that's disruptive to the environment, I think, from a physical, social aspect. But then, of course, because of all of the growing needs of energy consumption, so pointing to renewables and usage is very prescient.

What do you believe is the role of corporations like Tencent in the climate movement today, regardless of their business model or their product? There is a fairly straightforward or simple logic to this. If we look at almost anything, right? So any solution that so big social or sustainability issues in the very long run will generate business value sooner or quicker. Tencent, we started with a social network. So at that time, it's actually a social issue because if we actually connect people more efficiently, you create a lot of social value, right?

I guess a bit different with the normal business is that at the moment, you're probably focusing on how do we create sustainability value first and then try to capture the business value at a later time. And then the time scale may not be three to five years where a technology company used to maybe five to ten years. But if you have that vision or you have that patient, I think we'll get there. So that's why Tencent or like many of our peers are all doing very similar things. So I think it's based on that belief. Tencent has a massive customer base.

And you mentioned that your video games can have an impact on climate education. and advocacy. So can you speak more to this in the realm of learning? When we start this, right? Number one, we have our own decarbonization agenda. As a result, we need to not only

make our data center more efficient by renewables, we still have scope three emissions so that we have to leverage carbon credit. So when we tap into the carbon credit world, we see, okay, a lot of the work is actually protecting some of the

ecosystem. And then we realize that in many of our games, the theme of the game actually fits this topic very well because one of the heroes, one hero, his background, maybe he's the son of the forest, the other hero may be guardian of the frozen world, or maybe some game is about apocalypse, climate change, world. So that makes us naturally think,

okay, can we leverage some of these themes with the young players in the gaming world, with the work we're actually supporting in the physical world. So that brings us to this idea, okay, can we integrate some of the real knowledge and real climate change element into our games? So that's why we actually tried earlier this year in Southeast Asia, is that one of our games,

we're just about to launch a new hero. This hero is actually the son of the forest. So he grew up in the forest, his friends with all the animals in the forest and then they face challenges. So we say, okay, in that region, so we face a lot of actual challenge, the mongroves, the peatlands, the biodiversity in the sea.

And then that's why we integrated a lot of these topics into the gaming world. And we also promise to the players, if you do this and that, finish all the tasks in the game, we will actually, on your behalf, protect all of those. ecosystem and forest. And then we just want to give it a try.

And it turns out that over two, three weeks, we got like 20 million plus players actually participated. That may make us really exciting because that's a pathway to the young generation, deliver the message the way they like, and it's not boring. Right. I guess another good thing we found out, everybody cares. It's not just China or Asia or Europe or America, everybody cares. So we plan to do things, similar things like in other games, in parts of the world, because everybody really cares.

It's a topic that resonate to our everyday life. As we look ahead, let's say to 2030, is there one specific technology that you think is really going to move? the needle on climate change? For our decarbonization journey, we're going to ratify our commitment by 2030 to be carbon neutral, but we won't stop there because we also committed to the net zero, which is a more strict version of carbon neutral,

because we're going to try to reduce all the emissions we possibly can using whatever technology that can be applied. So our own decapabilization journey won't stop at 2030. We're going to continue to push through. So we will also try to push the major low-carbon technology forward. So at the moment, I think what really has already have a real pathway is everything around electricity. So we have renewables, which is cheaper than fossil fuel. We have storage that can electrify our transportation.

And then we have new technology in the energy storage space that we can make our great flexible so more renewable can be accommodated. And then we have heat pumps that can also decarbonize a lot of our buildings in terms of cooling or district heating. So the whole electrification, renewable energy transition is already there. I think we are pretty sure that it's going to scale up. And then I guess the question is, what is the second wave? So I believe the second wave is in the so-called hot-to-abate sectors.

It's iron steel, cement, chemicals, paper and pulp, and many other aluminum, many of them. Because these guys are, began to have more and more options to actually decarbonize their production. Five years ago, I think there are limited options. Like for iron steel, you probably can produce steel from scrap, but only have this much scrap available. But today, you can use hydrogen, or you can use biotchar. There are more and more technology available. So what I'm really excited is this next round of decarbonization technology.

They are designed to be carbon neutral or net zero from the very beginning. I think by 2030, many of them will be much cheaper. and much more scalable so that we will see maybe the first generation or second generation of low-carbon technology unicorns grow out of China

or anywhere in the world that will really give us confident that decarbonization can be achievable. I don't want to bet on any single technology, but I think that group of technology will eventually be there. I'm also curious about it is our kind of last question as we close out here.

What are you worried about? You know, there's this great vision for 2030, all of these hopeful opportunities, but obviously there are potential roadblocks, potential challenges, how you're thinking or considering some of those challenges and those hurdles that are going to need to be overcome in order to realize this vision.

So the challenges we face is, number one, I think, we don't really know the right answer. So that's also why I don't want to bet on any single technology because I don't know who will be the final winner. Someone will say, okay, we will get nuclear fusion in 20 years and then we don't need all of these solutions because we get unlimited energy for everyone and without any emission.

We just use hydrogen. We just use nuclear fusion, right? where we have almost unlimited nuclear fusion raw material to actually deliver the energy. But what if it doesn't? Or we might bet on CSUS or might bet on hydrogen, but what if it doesn't materialize? So I think that's the challenging part, is we don't know the right answer, but we don't have time to find out the right answer and then scale up that single right answer. So that's why we need to push all the...

possibility forward, which makes, I guess, everybody nervous. It makes me really nervous. I appreciate the candor, Dr. Howe, and thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm excited for the goals that you all have set, but I think also the vision in the world that you've painted that allows us to understand that it's going to be a challenge, right? And that's what hard things are about in figuring this out. We're doing something very new. And yet, there's a world full of possibility, which also means that all hands are on deck and everyone's talents can be put to use here. Everybody play our role and take action. We will get there. Thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure.

That's Dr. Shu Hao, Vice President of Sustainable Social Value at Tencent. All right, that's our show. Thanks for listening. And thanks for checking out our special series. We'll be back with more interviews from the Countdown Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, in the coming weeks. And if you want to listen to past conversations from the series, you can find them all on the TED Tech feed. In the meantime, you can keep this conversation going with us on our social media accounts at TED and at TED countdown on Instagram and X. Ted Tech is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Lucy Little and Trina Manino. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar, and the show is fact-checked by Jen Nam.

Special thanks to Constanza Gallardo, Danielle Barrezzo, Maria Ladias, Tanzaga Sungmanivon, and Roxanne Highlash. If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review so other people can find us to. I'm Shirel Dorsey. Let's keep digging into the future. Join me next week for more. Thank you.