Seoul, KOREA ¶ Apr 05, 2012 (Whowired) -- KT revealed on April 4 that the telecom giant would promote strategies to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a corporate-wide “Green IT” initiative.

As part of this effort, KT will seek to cut energy consumption by 20 percent from the current level by the year 2015 through various measures such as improvement in operational efficiency, enhancement in power supply efficiency in its data centers, boost in building energy efficiency, energy IT convergence, purchase of low power-consumption equipment, and deployment of smart grid technology.

One of the ways to do so is an application of the building energy management system, or KT-BEMS, which is expected to save the company as much as 30 billion won (approximately US$26.5 million) a year or 361 gigawatt hours.

This is equivalent to a reduction of 170,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Assuming a pine tree absorbs a total of 5 kilograms of carbon dioxide every year, this is same as planting 34 million new pine trees.

The company is also active in promoting smart grid technology. Once it is in place in most of the commercial buildings in Seoul, the company estimates that it would save as much as 4,450 gigawatt hours of electricity, the amount generated by the Kori No. 1 nuclear reactor. This is also comparable to planting 420 million pine trees.

Sean Chung (press@whowired.com)