Carbon counting as easy as piling “building blocks”

Cup blanking and drawing, trimming, printing and varnishing, neck in, flanging, packaging... At the production base of Shanghai Baosteel Packaging Co., Ltd., a production line of cans is in operation. In an office building 15 kilometers away, engineer Wang Zhiyou is supervising the process on his computer through “Jimu LCA cloud” software, developed by E-C Digital. His screen displays the carbon consumption of each production process in real time, and the system can also generate a report on the carbon footprint of the product with one click. “In the past, carbon accounting was time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the data was not accurate. This software is convenient, efficient and easy to use”, said Wang.

As going green and low-carbon has become a global consensus, different industries, associations and countries across the globe have proposed their carbon reduction paths. In September 2020, China put forward the “double carbon” goal. In recent years, the demand for carbon reduction by domestic enterprises has grown rapidly.

Accurate carbon data accounting stands as the foundation for enterprises to advance their green transformation, but it is not an easy task. “Overseas software has a high operation threshold, and at the beginning, every module of the process needs to be rebuilt by the user”, the relevant person in charge of E-C Digital pointed out. After spending years getting familiar with the steel manufacturing technique and process as well as the relevant carbon accounting standards, he finally got a foothold in the field of carbon accounting in the steel industry.

Is it possible to make carbon calculation as simple as building blocks? The R&D team of E-C Digital went to the bottom of the industry, transforming the smallest units (machines set, process) into “building blocks”, and inserting in each “building block” all the relevant data of the processing unit and the logical relation, thus delivering a product of greater convenience and easier use.

For carbon accounting of organizations, E-C Digital developed the “Jimu carbon cloud”, which is equipped with carbon accounting methods and models published in 24 industries. Enterprises can choose the model that is designed for their industry and fill in the data accordingly. For product carbon accounting, E-C Digital has developed the “Jimu LCA cloud”, which supports the carbon data management platform construction of national, industry-level enterprises as well as key enterprises in the industry chain. The software page and operating process are specially designed with utmost consideration to user habits and are simple and clear.

Carbon reduction enhances product competitiveness

Baosteel Packaging has spent years thinking about whether to replace its liquid ring vacuum pumps with screw vacuum pumps. On one hand, equipment upgrades cost a great deal. On the other hand, the original liquid ring vacuum pumps consume considerable energy and fail easily. The conundrum was finally solved after the company introduced E-C Digital’s software. With the help of the software, Baosteel Packaging finished the “calculation” that screw vacuum pumps could save 1,300 kWh of electricity a day, and the amount saved within about a year and a half would cover the cost of the new equipment. Based on this, Baosteel Packaging started its equipment upgrade in 2022.

In July 2021, the national carbon emissions trading market commenced operations. With the help of E-C Digital, Baosteel Packaging has formed a carbon reduction roadmap that is planned to be implemented in all its production bases. Its subsidiary Shanghai Baoyi Can Making Co., Ltd., for example, is prepared to carry out carbon emission trading in the national carbon emissions trading market in the future after it cuts carbon emissions, thus bringing additional income to Baosteel Packaging. Many E-C Digital’s clients have already laid out their plan for the carbon market in advance and have started accumulating their “net” carbon assets.

Anji of Zhejiang Province is home to numerous small and medium-sized office chair manufacturers. Most of these enterprises do not have their own professional carbon calculation engineers team, and the purchase of third-party consulting services generally costs a lot of time and money.

In 2023, a batch of office chairs from Anji had carbon labels that showed the carbon footprint of the whole life cycle of the product, forming their low-carbon competitiveness. E-C Digital is the key to making these carbon labels. Together with the Service-oriented Manufacturing Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, E-C Digital helps small and medium-sized furniture companies to carry out low-cost, high-efficiency product carbon footprint accounting, and generate product carbon footprint reports and carbon labels that meet the standards. “Reliable carbon footprint reporting makes our products more competitive”, said a furniture business owner from Anji.

The “Baosteel Product Online LCA System” jointly developed by E-C Digital and Shanghai Baosight Software Co., Ltd. is designed to calculate the carbon footprint of steel products and help enterprises achieve information disclosure through online carbon labels, which can produce as many as 330,000 data per month. E-C Digital assists Ouyeel Industrial Products Co., Ltd. in launching the “Oubei Zero Carbon” green supply chain service, which involves 5,000 to 10,000 industrial carbon footprint calculations per year and benefits small and medium-sized enterprises in a low-cost and efficient way.

After 7 years of development, E-C Digital has grown from a start-up team of 5 people to a high-tech enterprise of more than 100 people. Its business scope has expanded from steel and electricity to more than 30 industries such as nonferrous metals, chemicals, petrochemicals, batteries and new energy, serving more than 1,000 customers with cloud computing models, accurate quantification of carbon data and overall emission-cutting solutions.

Carbon quantification standards to go global

“Before 2021, we mainly served leading enterprises in the manufacturing sector, and found it hard to expand our business to small and medium-sized enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain or to new industries”, the relevant person in charge of E-C Digital said, “but in the past a year or two, more new customers come to seek for our services”.

In November 2023, the National Development and Reform Commission and other four departments jointly issued the Opinions on Accelerating the Establishment of a Product Carbon Footprint Management System, systematically deploying key tasks and laying the overall framework of the product carbon footprint management system. Under the guidance of the national strategy and driven by market demand, more and more enterprises have realized the importance and urgency of carbon reduction, and accelerated the accounting and disclosure of carbon emission data. The entire industrial chain is forced to be more “carbon-free”.

“Everyone is working on it, and you risk losing the competition if you do not catch up”, so said many E-C Digital users. “In the future, more and more customers will require the carbon footprint reporting. In addition to managing the carbon footprint of our own production processes, we will gradually require carbon reporting from our major raw material suppliers”, said the R&D department head of Baosteel Packaging.

“China’s strong industrial base and large global trade supply chain system mean a huge market for carbon accounting software applications. This brings tremendous opportunities”, said the relevant person in charge of E-C Digital. The company has become the first carbon accounting tool provider outside the EU to be included in the recommended catalog of Eco-Platform, an umbrella organization providing environmental assessment recognition. E-C Digital said that it is poised to contribute to the “going global” of China’s industrial carbon accounting standard.

This year, E-C Digital started its journey of overseas expansion and international exchanges. A number of international manufacturing companies have already sought cooperation from E-C Digital in solving the problem of carbon footprint information disclosure in the EU, and achieving mutual recognition with overseas platforms. “Our expertise is internationally recognized”, said the person from E-C Digital, “it gives us a sense of achievement to get involved in helping Chinese enterprises better fulfill their environmental responsibilities and become a model of low-carbon development in the world”.