On January 12, 2016, the Sustainable Development Advisory Committee, a Private Sector Advisory Board for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in China, was launched in Beijing to bring together some of the country’s most influential business minds across industries to collaborate, provide insights and mobilize resources to assist and promote the universally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 new sustainability goals agreed upon in September 2015. Because of the scope and ambition of the new set of goals, and the perception that governments alone cannot achieve them, the committee was created aiming at a strategic engagement of the development community with the Chinese private sector to cooperate in promoting sustainable development. Consisting of the country’s most influential business leaders, the founding members of the China Private Sector Advisory Board will work together with UNDP by providing insights and advice from the private sector’s perspective, as well as support through technical expertise and other available capacities for sustainable development. BYD’s chairman Wang Chuanfu represents the only automaker among them. The other founding members include Gree Electric, Letv, JD, Yili Group, Baidu, and Lenovo.
The UNDP was formed in 1965 in New York as the United Nation’s global development network. The Chinese UNDP Resident Representative Office was established in September 1979 following the continuous deepening of China’s reform and opening. The Chinese Office’s current priority areas are energy, the environment, poverty relief and steady growth. With China’s importance within the international community, the country is now a major player in the United Nations’ main development actions. As a member of the UNDP committee in China, BYD is also set to be particularly influential in the energy sector activities.
“We see countless opportunities for business to contribute to the implementation of the SDGs through commitments to inclusive business models, seeking shared values and commitments to environmentally sustainable ways of operating, from which the impact will be very positive,” said Alain Noudehou, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in China at the launch of the UNDP Private Sector Advisory Board. He noted that it will be only through the strong support of the private sector that we will be able to succeed in addressing the climate challenges, eradicating poverty and fighting inequality.
At the COP21 climate summit in Paris late last year, nearly 200 governments signed a landmark declaration – the commitment to keep the rise in global temperature 2 degrees Celsius. Many global private sector stakeholders advocating sustainable development rushed to support the agreement, and standing out among them was green-tech giant BYD Company Ltd. – the world’s largest manufacturer of electric buses, trucks and cars as well as energy storage systems. The company was greatly honored to be selected as one of the founding members of the UNDP committee, precisely because of its zero emission energy ecosystem – or what the company calls its “Three Green Dreams”, comprising solar power generation, energy storage and electrified transportation – is perfectly aligned with the UN’s sustainable development philosophy.
As a member of the committee and with its leading global EV positioning, BYD expects to make its strongest contribution to sustainability in the area of electrified transportation. The company relies not only on its unmatched EV technology – visible in its “battery, motor and electric control” platform and the “542 Strategy” – but also on its maturity – with a growing consumer PHEV offer of 2 models already on the market, the Qin and the Tang, and another 2 to hit the streets, the Song and the Yuan; and the 7+4 strategy for complete transport electrification, covering all forms of ground transportation beyond passenger cars, taxis, buses and coaches – with logistics, sanitation and construction trucks, as well as vehicles for warehouses, ports, airports and mining. But most importantly, BYD’s Electrified Public Transportation solutions have now accumulated significant zero-emission mileage to make a difference in global transportation emissions – BYD’s zero-emission buses and taxis are currently running in more than 160 cities in over 40 countries and regions, making the company a global role model in sustainability.
