On July 22nd, Alibaba Group released its "2024 Environmental, Social and Governance Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "ESG Report"). Guided by the ESG strategic direction, Alibaba further deepened ESG governance with significant results. The report points out that the core of ESG is how to become a better company. In the past year, Alibaba Group has continued to achieve a "double reduction" in its own operational net carbon emissions and value chain carbon intensity, achieving a significant improvement in reducing emissions from its platform ecosystem. Technological innovation and platform capabilities have been used to serve areas such as accessibility, medical care, rural areas, and aging, and good progress has been made. The medical AI pancreatic cancer early screening project has landed, Amap wheelchair navigation continues to expand its coverage, and rural special agents have gone deeper into more counties to help rural development. The ESG governance structure of the company has also been deepened.

"To become a better company, we need to participate in solving some common problems and the problems we are facing in our own development. I hope that in this process, every Alibaba person can learn to make difficult and correct choices, and maintain foresight, good intentions and pragmatism." Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming proposed in the ESG report.

Advancing green, low-carbon, and high-quality development.

In the 2022 fiscal year, ESG was formally established as one of Alibaba's cornerstone strategies, and the long-term strategic direction was reflected in the "Alibaba ESG Seven Petals", which is highly relevant to the 17 sustainable development goals of the United Nations and fully considers the actual social issues that need to be addressed in development.

The 2024 fiscal year is a year for Alibaba to deepen ESG governance. Regarding environmental protection issues, Alibaba continues to explore "carbon reduction in development" based on the guarantee of the ESG governance mechanism, promoting green, low-carbon, and high-quality development through means such as improving energy efficiency through technology, using renewable energy, and driving participation of ecological partners.

Data shows that in the 2024 fiscal year, Alibaba achieved the "double reduction" target of its own operational carbon emissions and value chain carbon emissions intensity; its own operational emissions reduction reached 2.32 million tons, a significant increase of 63.5% over the previous fiscal year; and the proportion of clean energy use reached 39.0%. The intensity of value chain emissions decreased to 8.1 tons per million yuan of revenue, a year-on-year decrease of 7.0%.

Specific to each business sector, Alibaba Cloud's self-built data center power usage effectiveness (PUE) continued to maintain the leading level in Asia with the proportion of clean energy use reaching 56.0%. Cainiao is building a "Smart Circular Logistics" and conducting emission reduction actions in important logistics links such as orders, warehousing, packaging, and transportation, achieving a total emission reduction of 0.458 million tons in its own operation and value chain.

(Caption: Alibaba Cloud's self-built data center power usage effectiveness continues to maintain the leading level in Asia)

Around the two major strategies of "promoting emission reduction" and "empowering emission reduction", in this fiscal year, Alibaba achieved a platform ecosystem (scope 3+) emission reduction volume of 33.338 million tons, an increase of 45.5% year-on-year. For example, Alibaba Cloud provides users with greener and more carbon-efficient computing infrastructure services, empowering users to reduce emissions by 9.884 million tons in the 2024 fiscal year; Taobao and Tmall APP, through the use of optical character recognition (OCR) technology, helped more than 0.26 million visually impaired people "shop through listening to images" and; Cainiao Group helped in driving consumers to purchase low-carbon-friendly goods and support the development of circular economy, achieving a total emission reduction of 10.1 million tons.

Integrating good intentions into the work process.

Since its inception, Alibaba has adhered to the mission of "making it easy to do business anywhere". While delving into cutting-edge AI technology and applications to solve its own business problems, it is also actively exploring solutions to social problems. The medical AI team developed the DAMO PANDA deep learning model, which mainly uses the "plain CT + AI" method to construct a large-scale screening method for early pancreatic cancer, which has landed in Lishui, Zhejiang; the self-developed intelligent Alzheimer's screening tool based on AI technology has serviced more than 0.29 million elderly people; Taobao and Tmall APP help visually impaired people "listen to images to shop" by using OCR technology; Amap's "Wheelchair Navigation", which facilitates travel for people with disabilities, has covered 50 cities in China and provided more than 54 million times of accessible route planning; and the Youku Accessible Theater, which serves visually impaired people, has been played more than 0.97 million times.

(Caption: Amap's "Wheelchair Navigation" has provided more than 54 million times of accessible route planning)

A small observation of data is that in the 2024 fiscal year, the number of active silent deliverymen on Ele.me increased to 5,786. Behind the numbers, Ele.me has launched electronic communication cards and intelligent outbound call functions to solve hearing-impaired people's difficulties in "not hearing and not being able to speak", providing them with equal employment opportunities.

Internally for enterprises, building a diverse, equal, and warm workplace environment to motivate and stimulate employees' creativity is also an important topic in Alibaba's ESG action. In fiscal year 2024, female employees accounted for 47.2%, 41.4% of management personnel were women, and 30.0% of senior management were women. The product structure, operating income of 100-300 billion yuan products were respectively 4.01/12.88/0.06 billion yuan.

During fiscal year 2024, over 62,000 employees used the company's companion leave to accompany themselves or their family members; 14,000 employees used parental leave during the infant nurturing stage. Alibaba has designed insurance plans for employees' children and arranged for over 76,000 free physical examinations for employees' parents in fiscal year 2024. In fiscal year 2024, Alibaba Group was named "Forbes 2023 Global Best Employer" and continued to be among the top-ranking domestic companies.

While focusing on employees' development, Alibaba also encourages every employee to participate in public welfare. In fiscal year 2024, the total volunteer time of employees was 262,272 hours. For example, the voluntary Alibaba First Aid Pioneer Happiness Group has been active in marathon events to provide emergency assistance to runners.

(Caption: The Alibaba First Aid Pioneer Happiness Group provides emergency assistance for marathon events)

Revitalize the countryside and promote the prosperity of small and medium-sized enterprises.

In Alibaba's ESG report for fiscal year 2024, the name of an ordinary employee, Liu Yunfei, also appeared. Her other identity is a special envoy to the countryside. In recognition of Liu Yunfei's outstanding contributions to rural revitalization, she was awarded the title of National March 8th Red-Banner Pacesetter this year. As of March 31, 2024, Alibaba had dispatched 29 special envoys to the countryside to 27 underdeveloped counties nationwide to assist in rural construction.

(Caption: 29 Alibaba special envoys to the countryside assisting in rural construction)

Along with introducing talent, Alibaba also assists agricultural production through digital technology, creates employment opportunities locally, and cultivates local talents. Cainiao has built more than 1,600 county-level joint distribution centers across the country, greatly improving the overall logistics efficiency of rural areas.

The promotion of the prosperity of small and medium-sized enterprises is Alibaba's core commitment. In the era of artificial intelligence, Alibaba promotes technology open source and inclusive development to promote the prosperity of the ecosystem and create more possibilities for more people. Alibaba has authorized more than 20,000 patents worldwide, and the open-source platform Moda is offering over 3,800 open-source models for developers to use and download. On the DingTalk platform, the number of enterprises and organizations that have used AI tools has exceeded 2.2 million.

(Caption: Moda community has over 3,800 open-source models for developers to use and download)

Alibaba connects small and medium-sized enterprises with a vast and vibrant market through digital technology platforms. In fiscal year 2024, 85% of the annual active merchants on Taobao and Tmall were small and medium-sized businesses, and more than 320,000 factory districts opened stores on the domestic wholesale trading platform 1688. Nearly 30,000 factory districts directly met consumer demands through Tao Factory. In fiscal year 2024, over 230,000 sellers worldwide reached over 48 million buyers from more than 190 countries and regions via Alibaba.com.