On September 15, 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) solicited opinions on a series of sector standards related to emission peak, including the Technical Specification for Carbon Emission Verification in the Petroleum and Chemical Industry. The 197 industry standard projects cover 11 fields, including chemical, steel, building materials, electronics, textiles, and communications. Of the 197 standard projects, 111 are about chemical, steel and building materials.
The 197 projects are all related to green energy saving, including carbon emission quota, carbon footprint, carbon disclosure, management standards, waste recycling, as well as green factories and recycling parks. Among the 197 standards, 195 are newly developed plans and 2 are revised plans. All of the released standards in this batch do not adopt international and foreign advanced standards.
In September 2020, China announced their dual carbon goals (carbon peak and carbon neutrality). A number of related measures have been introduced since then, such as the 14th Five-year Plan for Circular Economy and the opening of China's carbon trading market in July 2021.
Currently, the carbon trading market continues to thrive with its total volume of carbon emission quota (CEA) exceeding 5.9 million tons in its first month. In addition to the power generation companies that initially entered the carbon market, building materials, steel, non-ferrous metals and other industries are encouraged to participate in the carbon market later. Therefore, the purpose of this batch of sector standards is to provide reference for China's carbon market and various industries (such as emission reduction and carbon footprint, etc.).
In addition, the accuracy of carbon emission data is crucial for both the climate change and carbon market. As a result, the standards for carbon disclosure and carbon footprint verification play an important role in ensuring the reliability and accuracy of carbon emission data. There are no relevant sector standards for carbon footprint before, so the formulation and release of these sector standards will fill the gap in this field.
Recently, emission reduction became an important topic in China. With the opening of the carbon market and the fact that some Chinese regions went through electricity restrictions in August, we’d suggest foreign stakeholders pay more attention to the green topic. For foreign companies that have entered or intend to enter the Chinese market, especially those who rely heavily on traditional energy in production process, we advise that they start to prepare for the energy transition according to carbon reduction standards and initiatives; companies that produce products driven by traditional energy sources (diesel, gasoline, non-road equipment, etc.) should also focus on the direction of emissions-related policies in China and change their strategy in time.
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