In regions of China with abundant renewable energy resources, companies can reduce their product carbon footprints (PCF) by purchasing green certificates (GEC) or green electricity. How should companies accurately account for their PCF if they purchase domestic/international green certificates or procure green electricity?

Focusing on the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), this report examines its role within the context of global climate action—a role that attracts considerable interest but also faces significant hurdles. The report starts by outlining the fundamental concepts of the VCM before analyzing its current challenges, including demand volatility, project quality concerns, and a deficit of trust. It also discusses the transformative impact of collaborative initiatives [or "the Symbiotic Alliance"]. Looking ahead, the report explores the market's future prospects under various potential frameworks, stressing that cooperation among all parties is crucial for the VCM to make a more substantial contribution to global decarbonization efforts.

The "Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Listed Companies – Preparation of Sustainability Reports (Draft for Comments)", as a supporting document to the "Self-Regulatory Rules for Listed Companies – Sustainability Reporting (Trial)", aims to guide China's A-share listed companies in enhancing their sustainability disclosure capabilities, improving the standardization of sustainability report preparation, and strengthening the completeness and relevance of sustainability-related information. The Rules and the Guidelines mark a new phase in sustainability information disclosure in China's capital market. However, IPE's comparative analysis reveals that there are still significant differences between these requirements and mainstream international ESG disclosure standards. This discrepancy may lead to duplicate disclosures and impose additional costs.

To guide the public in practicing a low-carbon lifestyle, IPE has developed a Form for Calculating Emission Reductions from Individual Daily Activities based on extensive research and analysis, which covers 43 common low-carbon behaviors.

In the context of climate change, will extreme heat become the new normal?

Under the guidance of the "1+N" policy framework, China has successively put forward a series of policy objectives for the power industry, especially for coal-fired power planning. The future development of coal-fired power needs to consider the requirements of low-carbon emission reduction and security, including: gradually changing from a high-carbon power source to a low-carbon or zero-carbon power source, withdrawing in an orderly manner and shifting its role from the primary power source to that of sustaining energy security. Listed enterprises in the power sector, with its leading installed capacity in coal-fired power need to lead in this low-carbon transition.

As of June 5, 2022, a total of 1,815 carbon market compliance companies have disclosed their FY 2020 carbon emission data, covering approximately 3.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions from all units. By observing and analyzing enterprises' annual GHG emissions, we believe that the information disclosure in the first compliance period of the national carbon market has made significant progress, but there is still further improvements.