China's green transformation: Building climate-adaptive industries

Editor's note: Jin Jun is a researcher of the Zhejiang Research Base of China United Front Theory Research Association, School of Management, Zhejiang University. The article reflects the author's opinion and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

China aims to steadily advance its efforts to achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and to implement the new round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Therefore, during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, a dual control system for carbon emissions should be implemented, with a primary focus on managing emission intensity (emissions per unit of output) supplemented by the control over total emission amount, thereby expediting the building of a climate-adaptive society. These efforts will pose challenges to corporate development while also creating opportunities for enterprises to leap ahead.

Controlling carbon emission intensity requires companies to change their climate strategies from climate mitigation to climate adaption in order to decrease vulnerability to climate risk and increase climate competitiveness. The climate resilience strategy of a firm is a systematic-level strategy to lower carbon emissions with a series of innovative actions, such as, expanding energy efficiency, increasing usage of renewable energy, low-carbon product design, low-carbon process and material innovations, as well as carbon removal activities. The carbon emission reduction (including the emissions within enterprises' own business activities as well as emissions in the supply chain) should be considered in three scopes, and all stakeholders are involved in this transformation.

Industrial collaboration to build green and low-carbon supply chains

According to the life cycle theory, the majority of a manufacturer's carbon emissions originate from enterprises along its supply chain. For instance, life cycle accounting of garments and power batteries shows that more than 80 percent of their carbon emissions come from their supply chains. Therefore, it is an effective strategy for supply chain enterprises to engage in coordinated green and low-carbon innovation, working jointly to reduce emissions and build green supply chain systems. It enables companies and industries to control both their carbon-emission intensity and total carbon emissions within their climate strategies, to evolve into climate adaptive ones, and to enhance their climate resilience.

Green design to promote carbon emission intensity reduction 

The contribution of green product design to reducing carbon emissions per unit of output lies not merely in improving corporate competitiveness through green products but in factoring in carbon emissions from raw materials, production processes, product use, and disposal during the design phase. In this way, companies can control carbon emissions per unit of output at the source, systematically select low-carbon suppliers, promote green manufacturing, and drive innovation in low-carbon materials.

Balancing intelligent transformation with green and low-carbon transition

Digital and intelligent technologies are widely applied in energy and operations management to improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption. However, the application of artificial intelligence technologies, particularly those technologies like computing power, requires substantial energy use and thus increases businesses' energy consumption. Therefore, during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, enterprises should fully account for the additional electricity consumption generated by digital and intelligent technologies when expanding renewable energy use and improving energy efficiency through these technologies. This will help effectively balance digital and intelligent transformation with green and low-carbon transition.

In summary, aiming to reduce carbon emissions across the entire product life cycle, and through the coordination of both supply and demand sides in green design, manufacturing, operations, services, and consumption, systematic climate strategies will help Chinese enterprises lower carbon emissions per unit of output (carbon intensity) and total carbon emissions, thereby enhancing their climate resilience.