June 15, 2022 marks China’s 10th National Low-Carbon Day, the event of the celebration was hosted in Ji'nan, the capital city of East China's Shandong Province on Wednesday with the theme "implementing the 'dual carbon' action and building a beautiful homeland together." Since General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward the goal of "peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060" in 2020, the policy system of green low-carbon development in China has been improving. In November 2021, the Ministry of Commerce released the Plan to Promote High-Quality Development of Foreign Trade during the 14th Five-Year Plan Period (2021-2025) and made it clear that domestic and international green low-carbon trade rules and mechanisms should be implemented. At the same time, life-cycle carbon footprint tracking system of foreign trade products should be built. To better develop foreign trade, China encourages enterprises to a life-cycle green transformation and support the green development of industry chain and supply chain.

In this context, the Green Partnership of Industrial Parks of China (GPIPC) and  China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME) jointly held an online seminar on "Life-Cycle Green and Low-Carbon Development of Export Products" and the fourth Green and Low-carbon Innovation Dialogue, at which the self-assessment platform of carbon footprint for foreign trade products was released, providing a platform for member enterprises of the CCCME to address carbon barriers and strengthen their capacity in low carbon transformation. The two sides signed a memorandum of cooperation, jointly building a high-standard and high-level green trade promotion platform and a service support platform for the green and low-carbon development of enterprises. Liu Chun, Vice President of CCCME, and Zhang Ligang, Deputy Director of the Secretariat of the GPIPC, attended and signed the Memorandum.

The cooperation will focus on three aspects:

1. Jointly formulate standards and carry out subject research related to the life-cycle tracking of carbon footprint and the green low-carbon development of foreign trade products.

2. Launch the "Carbon Footprint Self-Assessment Service Platform for Foreign Trade Products" on the official website of the Green Low Carbon International Cooperation Committee of the CCCME and open for free to the member enterprises of the Chamber.

3. Co-organize a series of capacity building activities to enhance the green and low-carbon development and promote the sustainable development of foreign trade enterprises.

The self-assessment public service platform of carbon footprint for foreign trade products can establish information of single or multiple products. The platform provides optional evaluation scope, including reasonable PCR evaluation rules, life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluation boundary, life cycle inventory (LCI) evaluation scope, appraisal, declaration quantity and unit. It also contains complete life-cycle evaluation for products, including their production, installation, use, disposal and other procedures. Meanwhile, the platform provides a convenient way to calculating carbon emissions throughout the whole life cycle, and this is how it can automatically generate evaluation reports, make multi-dimensional comparison and analysis, and support enterprise with their decision making. The platform has an internationalized and localized carbon emission factor library of 100,000+ items and an international authoritative greenhouse gas accounting standard library. It supports diversified functions, including automatically generating carbon footprint assessment reports, offering a convenient way for foreign trade enterprises to self-assess carbon footprint of their product.

In the future, the GPIPC will work hand in hand with the CCCME to provide enterprises with professional services in sectors like carbon inventory, life-cycle carbon footprint accounting, energy saving, recommendations of carbon reduction, and carbon neutrality at product, brand and enterprise levels. The two sides will jointly promote the industry's green and low-carbon development and international cooperation.