Introduction
POINT
This issue presents the carbon-related field information message, which is the first issue of Carbon Cipher Ltd owns bulletin and is present in Japanese, Chinses, and English. This newsletter contains information on carbon accounting, carbon policy, carbon market, and carbon trading; expanded content on the low-carbon economy, climate issues, and energy, which aims to reduce carbon emissions in all industries. Besides, the reports and academic papers on the topics such as emerging technologies (e.g., blockchain technology) that drive carbon neutrality are also selected. Through the information and knowledge platform, we hope to communicate with industry inside experts and friends outside, grow together and create a shared future.
News
Carbon Accounting
Yamato Holdings（HD） signed a fundamental agreement on July 12 with the French DPD Group, which owns the largest delivery network in Europe, to cooperate in the environmental field, including the establishment of a common global standard for calculating greenhouse gas emissions. If the calculation standards for indirect greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation and delivery can be unified across companies, accounting reports from now on can have a uniform criterion, and this will also help visualize greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain.
【VIEW】
https://online.logi-biz.com/63188/
Green Economy
Japan’s Cabinet Office has released an estimate of “Green GDP,” which measures a country makes how much effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with its economic activity. The Green GDP growth rate for Japan is 1.04% between 1995 and 2020. This economic indicator is calculated to visualize the relationship between the economy and the environmental burden in order to achieve a low-carbon society.
【VIEW】
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/4a2237b468dd9bf9d82feb7988989e710b1ddf8d
Carbon Market
An analysis of some of the first crypto carbon credits issued reveals that, first, the presence of a large number of “zombie” projects, which means projects that were not previously active prior to the economic incentive of the credits. The second is that almost all of the credits that were migrated to the blockchain came from projects whose quality had previously been questioned. Ultimately, the biggest problem with carbon credits is the lack of a single standard of quality. In order to have a single standard, a reliable and verifiable benchmark for emission reductions must be put in place.
【VIEW】
https://earth.org/crypto-carbon-credits/
Carbon Market
China’s carbon market was officially launched on July 16, 2021, and the market has been running smoothly overall for the past year. As of July 15, 2022, the cumulative volume of carbon emission allowances traded reached 194 million tons, with a cumulative turnover of 8.492 billion yuan. The first compliance cycle of the national carbon market included a total of 2,162 key emission units in the power generation industry, covering about 4.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The construction of the national carbon market is still in its initial stage. In the next period, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment will adhere to the positioning of the national carbon market as a policy tool for controlling greenhouse gas emissions, actively promoting the introduction of relevant regulations, and improving the supporting trading system and technical specifications.
【VIEW】
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1739562063366161067&wfr=spider&for=pc
Perspectives
Green Economy 【Yuki Kusumi】
The Panasonic Group has set a Panasonic Green Impact (PGI) goal to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 310 million tons by 2050. To achieve this goal, Panasonic Holdings (HD) announced on July 13, 2022, that by 2024, the company aims to reduce its own emissions by 16.34 million tons and its CO2 emissions by 38.3 million tons through its indirect “emission reduction contribution”. In order to increase its contribution to carbon reduction, the company’s strategy is to increase sales of environmentally friendly products by actively supplying them to markets where growth is expected.
【VIEW】
https://xtech.nikkei.com/atcl/nxt/news/18/13300/
Climate & Energy 【Magnolia Tovar and Olivia Azadegan】
The European Commission’s demand for hydrogen is growing on a large scale, however, the production of blue hydrogen depends on strong methane management and large amounts of carbon capture and storage, which makes it difficult to achieve large-scale hydrogen production in Europe. The term “low-carbon hydrogen” is included in the EU’s Hydrogen Strategy and the Gas Package, but details, provisions and certification systems are still lacking. In order to achieve climate goals and address energy security, the EU needs to show more clarity in its policies.
Carbon Market 【Xv Nan】：Rebooting China’s carbon credits: What will 2022 bring?
CCER trading in China came to an abrupt end in 2017 due to the downturn and unregulated carbon market. However, in terms of the integrity of the carbon market, CCERs are indispensable trading targets. Only if the benefits of active emission reduction also enter the market and gain revenue can more market players other than emission control enterprises be motivated to actively practice various emission reduction projects. Nowadays, past CCERs that were blocking the market have been significantly absorbed, and the issuance of carbon emission allowances has accumulated a compliance cycle of experience. There are more and more signs that CCER trading may be able to re-open. Throughout the long preparation and planning, the government has carefully and clearly guided the boundaries and shape of the future pool of CCER projects.
【VIEW】
https://chinadialogue.net/en/climate/rebooting-chinas-carbon-credits-what-will-2022-bring
Green Economy 【Li Qingru】：Fiscal Policy Tools for Achieving Dual Carbon Goals – An Analysis of Japan as an Example
In order to achieve the medium-term goal of carbon reduction by 2030, the Japanese government has launched the “Green Growth Strategy”. First, Japan has increased its financial investment and created the “Green Innovation Fund” with a total amount of 2 trillion JPY to support key areas that are indispensable in the process of moving toward a carbon-neutral society and that are the basis of industrial competitiveness. At the same time, Japan has created the “Carbon Neutral Investment Promotion Tax” and “Digital Transformation Investment Promotion Tax” to guide the future direction of industrial development. The Japanese government estimates that the Green Innovation Fund will attract 15 trillion JPY of private investment in research, development, and equipment, and that the Carbon Neutral Investment Promotion Tax System will generate about 1.7 trillion JPY of private investment over 10 years.
【VIEW】
https://chinadialogue.net/en/climate/rebooting-chinas-carbon-credits-what-will-2022-bring
Interpretations
【Carbon Market】People’s Daily: Actively playing an important role in the carbon market
Currently, China’s national carbon market is the largest carbon market operating in the world, and the carbon emissions it controls reach about 70% of the country’s total energy-related carbon emissions. At the same time, the carbon price formed by allowance trading will have an important impact on the production and operation decisions of enterprises and the consumption behavior of the general public within the whole economy, which will not only promote the formation of low-carbon production and lifestyle but also provide dynamic incentives for innovation and investment in low-carbon, zero-carbon and carbon-negative technologies, promoting the comprehensive low-carbon transformation of China’s economy and society.
【VIEW】
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1738100655590105217&wfr=spider&for=pc
【Climate Home News】Make polluters pay for climate adaptation, voluntary carbon market body proposes
Under the proposal to improve the integrity of carbon trading, the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Board has suggested that emissions companies (sic. corporate polluters) could be encouraged to contribute to adaptation financing when purchasing carbon offsets. This would be done by collecting a share of the proceeds from the sale of carbon credits to help vulnerable communities adapt to the impacts of climate change. Under the Paris Agreement’s new carbon market rules, countries agreed that under a centralized carbon market, 5% of the proceeds of transactions would go to the Adaptation Fund. It is hoped that the near future will see the conclusion of new agreements to better support developing countries and less developed regions.
【Climate Change】Carbon Daily: In-depth Interview: IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report on the Global Impacts of Climate Change
The evaluation of the sixth report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change（IPCC）warns that further delays in global action to mitigate climate change and adapt to its impacts will miss the best opportunity to maintain sustainable development in the future. The report shows in detail the harsh impacts of changes in species diversity, climate change, food security and extreme weather, while pointing out that current levels of adaptation and response capacity do not yet meet the levels needed to reduce climate risks, and that the gap between past estimates of the costs of addressing climate issues and the actual funding needed continues to widen.
Academics
【Climate-Neutral Aviation】Definitions and implications of climate-neutral aviation
To meet ambitious climate targets, the aviation sector needs to neutralize CO2 emissions and reduce non-CO2 climatic effects. Despite being responsible for approximately two-thirds of aviation’s impacts on the climate, most of aviation non-CO2 species are currently excluded from climate mitigation efforts. Here we identify three plausible definitions of climate-neutral aviation that include non-CO2 forcing and assess their implications considering future demand uncertainty, technological innovation, and CO2 removal. We demonstrate that simply neutralizing aviation’s CO2 emissions, if nothing is done to reduce non-CO2 forcing, causes up to 0.4 °C additional warming, thus compromising the 1.5 °C target.
【Blockchain】Application of Blockchain in Carbon Trading
This paper introduces the similarity between the mechanism of carbon trading and blockchain, then it elaborates on the application of blockchain in carbon trading. In corporate carbon trading, blockchain technology can record and transfer information flow reliably, realize point-to-point transactions between suppliers and demanders to achieve “decentralization”, and help to reduce the entry threshold for the carbon trading market. At the same time, an analysis of the social environment for blockchain-based carbon trading on person is made. Finally, the paper confirms the value of “blockchain + carbon trading” and looks forward to the future.
【VIEW】
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610219305338
【Blockchain】Blockchain of carbon trading for UN sustainable development goals
Carbon credits should reduce the environmental pollution and carbon emission of the Earth in the future. The market for carbon credits will become a critical issue from 2021, and carbon credits will be applied to systems where individuals can trade. Policies, strategies, and technologies are also necessary to measure the trading of carbon credits. This paper aims at making transactions more reliable by applying blockchain technology to measure carbon emission rights. It uses blockchain to verify carbon emissions rights among the UN-SDGs’ (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) 17 tasks.
【VIEW】
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/10/4021
【Blockchain】Blockchain of carbon trading for UN sustainable development goals
The need to limit climate change, which is an urgent challenge for global society, requires encouraging discontinuous innovations that will dramatically change our society. In line with the “Environment Innovation Strategy”, various companies and organizations are challenging innovations toward a decarbonized society. In order to promote collaboration between the companies and organizations to accelerate the creation of innovations, this study aims to structure innovation challenges toward a decarbonized society, by conducting text mining of the “Challenge Zero” initiative by Keidanren (Japan Business Federation). Cluster analysis and correspondence analysis are performed to identify common keywords from the challenges and show the relationship between the keywords and industries. Correspondence analysis plots show that the keywords and industries can be classified into three categories: “electrification”, “energy decarbonization” and “finance”.
【VIEW】
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjser/42/4/42_224/_article/-char/ja/
Other resources
GFEP Report Launch: 10 Years of REDD+: Outcomes and Socio-Ecological Impacts on Forests, Carbon, Biodiversity, and People
【VIEW】
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjser/42/4/42_224/_article/-char/ja/
Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report
【VIEW】
https://www.iufro.org/science/gfep/follow-up-studies/biodiversity-forest-management-and-redd-2021/
VEF Virtual Series Industry Track Policy Brief
【VIEW】
https://www.viennaenergyforum.org/policy-briefs/
Global Renewables Outlook: Energy transformation 2050
【VIEW】
https://irena.org/publications/2020/Apr/Global-Renewables-Outlook-2020
Events
Upcoming Events
2022.8.22 Social trends to scope 3 emissions and corresponding corporate responses
【DETAIL】
https://www.mapion.co.jp/news/release/000002054.000032407-all/
2022.8.26-27. Forum The 4th China Carbon Trading Market Development Forum
【DETAIL】
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/DynRogjQXdB2ogALoaR0XA
2022.8.17 & 8.30 Learn about climate change trends in the business
【DETAIL】
https://rechroma.co.jp/seminar/climate
Recordings
2022.8.9 Webinar MotionBoard Dr.Sum: Make carbon neutrality realized
【DETAIL】
https://info.wingarc.com/public/application/add/29263
2022.8.1 Webinar Scaling up renewable energy investment in Africa
【DETAIL】
https://chinadialogue.net/en/climate/scaling-up-renewable-energy-investment-in-africa/
Mar-Jul 2022 Webinar Reducing Scope 3 Emissions – Webinar Series Global Compact Network UK
【DETAIL】
https://globalcompact-th.com/2022ReducingScope3Emissions