(Yicai) Dec. 5 -- China has issued nine quantitative standards for carbon emission reduction in the fields of travel and office work at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The criteria, which target individuals’ green and low-carbon scenarios, will provide the foundation for the implementation of China’s carbon inclusion mechanism.

The COP28 climate summit is being held in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12. It will conduct the very first global review on the implementation of the Paris Agreement to promote the further execution of the agreement, which addresses climate change.

The amount of carbon emission reduction in the field of low-carbon travel will be calculated based on seven low-carbon traveling standards, including walking, riding bicycles and e-bikes, and taking public transportation. Meanwhile, the amount of carbon emission reduction in the field of office work will focus on two criteria that have been fairly popular in recent years: paper-free offices and teleconferences.

Each individual’s carbon-reducing acts will be quantified to the gram level, Tao Lan, executive director of the Carbon Inclusion Commission under the All-China Environment Federation, said during a press briefing held yesterday at the country’s pavilion at the COP28.

The nine standards, which were implemented on Dec. 1, are available to the public on China’s National Group Standards Information Platform, Tao noted.

Environmental protection organizations represented by the All-China Environment Federation and many large-sized companies, including Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding, Internet giants Tencent Holdings and Baidu, local lifestyle services provider Meituan, and leading ride-hailing platform Didi Chuxing, took part in the formulation of the standards.

China is still in the stage of rapid development in terms of urbanization, so consumption-related carbon emissions are still rising.

The debut of the nine standards will assist local governments’ work on carbon inclusion and provide measuring criteria for cumulative carbon assets on personal carbon accounts to boost carbon emission reduction on the consumer side, Zhang Xin, chief economist at the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, told Yicai.

Carbon inclusion is an innovative and voluntary emission reduction mechanism that quantifies companies’ and people’s carbon emission-reducing acts, records them, and calculates the corresponding value by offering transactions and monetization channels.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Futura Costaglione