Countries are actively developing heavy industries, manufacturing, and infrastructure to drive market growth, but they often pay environmental costs accordingly. Approximately 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from infrastructure construction and operations, such as power plants, buildings, and transportation. What will be the effect of promoting society's emphasis on low-carbon manufacturing?
What Is A Low-Carbon Manufacturing Plan?
The Low-Carbon Manufacturing Plan (LCMP) aims to reduce the carbon emissions of plants and assist manufacturers in fulfilling their environmental responsibilities. It provides manufacturers with tools to measure the effectiveness of carbon reduction and a label rating system to enable them to grasp the best measures for managing greenhouse gases.
Low-carbon production development promotion goals:
To fully guide the low-carbon production of the industry, various manufacturing departments in various countries actively promote low-carbon production plans, hoping to improve energy efficiency and use clean energy. In addition to promoting energy efficiency, guiding the process of equipment replacement, and introducing new process technology, low-carbon fuel substitution will lead the industry to lower carbon production. Low volume and low carbon fuels will promote low-carbon industry sustainability and reduce greenhouse gases in the industrial sector.
Advantages of Low-Carbon Production Development
With fossil energy being depleted, and global warming increasing from petroleum use, saving energy in production fields will work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as CO2. Low-carbon production is based on advocating low-carbon concepts, pursuing energy efficiency, and clean energy development from the perspective of supply. The following are characteristics of low-carbon production:
- Full energy consumption:
Refers to the sum of energy consumption and indirect energy consumption in production. Energy consumption in production refers to the energy consumption of product production, primary energy consumption such as coal, oil, and natural gas, and secondary energy consumption such as electricity, gas, and steam. It also includes energy consumption for construction.
- Low emissions:
Relatively low carbon emissions and absolute low carbon emissions are two separate considerations. Based on the cost-benefit principle of resources and output, if there are relatively high economic benefits per unit of greenhouse gas emissions, production can be said to have relatively low carbon emissions. However, if there is excessive pursuit of production, the total carbon emissions may still increase significantly. Global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide is dependent on a series of environmental and ecological factors. Low-carbon emissions are only relatively low-carbon emissions, and the absolute reduction in the total emissions of the entire international community should be a primary goal.
- High output:
Refers to using less material and energy consumption to produce more social wealth. In the discussion about low-carbon production, carbon productivity indicators are introduced to measure low-carbon production. Carbon productivity refers to the gross product value produced per unit of CO2 emissions output value of an industry or region. The higher the product value, the higher the low-carbon production.
- Sustainability:
Low-carbon production sustainability is based on the ideas of "continuous improvement" and "dynamic balance" which emphasize and explore ways to save energy and reduce CO2 emissions throughout the entire industrial chain of product design, production, and consumption.
- Industry:
In different stages of development or in different industries, the intensity of energy consumption and carbon emissions is different. The energy intensity of the heavy chemical industry is much higher than that of the general manufacturing industry. In either industry, the lower the technology, the higher the energy intensity. The industrial structure affects the total energy consumption and the goal is for industry to be less energy intense to save energy, reduce emissions, and promote low-carbon production.
- Hierarchy:
The way low-carbon production should be analyzed at different levels such as micro, middle, or macro.
With the progress of industry and society, to achieve environmental protection and sustainable development, all countries should attach importance to low-carbon manufacturing plans and attempt to strike a balance between social development and environmental protection. As climate anomalies and changes intensify, there is an even more urgent need to actively reduce carbon production.
