On December 12, the 2023 "Top Ten Green Cases" jointly launched by the Beijing News Zero Carbon Research Institute and the China Business Administration Case Center of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University were announced. The "1kg per person, help carbon neutrality in the Asian Games" event hosted by Ant Group was rated as one of the "Top 10 Green Cases" in 2023.
It is reported that the "Top Ten Green Cases" were selected from nearly 200 solicited cases that lasted more than two months for more than two months of review and final defense, and finally stood out.
Promote public participation through green events and help set a world record for carbon neutrality in the Asian Games.
The "1kg per person, help carbon neutrality for the Asian Games" project, which won the "Top 10 Green Cases" in 2023, is a successful exploration of Ant Group's service to the Hangzhou Asian Games and build a green public welfare platform for the "Green Asian Games". In April 2022, the Hangzhou Asian Organizing Committee proposed to launch the event in order to create the first "carbon neutral Asian Games and Asian Para Games" in the history of the Asian Games and drive the public to participate in green and low-carbon.
As the builder of the official green public welfare platform for the Hangzhou Asian Games, Ant Group actively implemented the requirements of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment's "Implementation Guide for Carbon Neutrality in Large-scale Events (Trial)", applied digital technology to the whole process of carbon emission accounting, and successfully developed a carbon neutrality data management platform for the Asian Games and Asian Para Games, improving the efficiency of carbon emission accounting. On this basis, Ant Group relies on the "Ant Forest" to encourage the public to accumulate "green energy" through the practice of green and low-carbon life.
According to the rules of the event, as long as it contributes 1 kilogram of "green energy" to the Asian Games through low-carbon behaviors such as green travel, paper and plastic reduction, high efficiency and energy saving, and recycling, Ant Group will purchase the same amount of "carbon credits" from the carbon market and donate them to the Asian Organizing Committee to offset the carbon emissions generated by the Asian Games and help "carbon neutrality in the Asian Games".
It is reported that the "1 kilogram per person, helping the Asian Games carbon neutrality" activity, in more than a year, there are more than 10.6 billion people (54.8 million people) participated, and more than 1060,000 tons of carbon credits, and also obtained"The most people participate in an environmental event in a year"Guinness World Records certification. In addition, Ant Group has refined the event into a local standard for green and low-carbon operation of large-scale events, and has successfully applied it to other large-scale events such as the Xiamen Marathon.
Participate in COP28 and strive to solve the "three major problems" of the public's practice of green and low-carbon
In recent years, Ant Group has actively participated in international multilateral climate events and conducted in-depth research on public green behavior, encouraging and calling for a series of "problems" for the public to practice green and low-carbon.
At the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) this year, Peng Yijie, Chief Sustainability Officer of Ant Group, was invited to participate in a series of activities such as the COP28 "China Corner".
The public is the key to green and low-carbon actions. The change of public awareness, behavior and demand is the key catalyst", Peng Yijie made a keynote speech at the side event on the theme of "From Initiative to Action: Sharing a Green and Low-Carbon Life". She believes that stimulating and maintaining the "sustainability" of public participation is the most challenging part of this issue.
Peng Yijie, CSO of Ant Group, speaks at the COP28 China Corner Photo by Xin Wen.
In order to stimulate the public's internal drive to practice green and low-carbon, Ant Forest has worked with ecological partners to solve three problems in the past seven years," Peng Yijie said, adding that the public's green and low-carbon actions are scattered in daily life, and the first thing to solve is the "accumulation difficulty" of green and low-carbon behavior. Ant Forest gives full play to the technical capabilities of Alipay's digital platform, and after being authorized by users, it can help users record more than 60 low-carbon behaviors including green travel, paper and plastic reduction, first-class service, recycling, energy saving and consumption reduction, etc., and these low-carbon scenarios come from many platform ecological partners, so that people's daily green behaviors can be accumulated.
The second is the difficulty of quantifying green and low-carbon", Peng Yijie said, Ant Forest asked professional institutions to issue a carbon emission reduction methodology, calculate the average carbon emission reduction corresponding to each low-carbon behavior, and use it as a standard to reward users with corresponding "green energy". For example, using an electronic payment to reward 5 grams of green energy - whether you pay 1 yuan or 10,000 yuan, it is a reward of 5 grams of green energy, because saving a paper receipt, the average carbon emission reduction is 5 grams.
We found that this quantifiable method is very effective in encouraging green action, and the cumulative generation of green energy by users of Ant Forest has reached 31.92 million tons in seven years", but Peng Yijie believes that the quantification of numbers alone is still not enough to achieve lasting incentives, and an "internal driving force" to mobilize public participation and perseverance is needed to solve the "incentive difficulties" of green and low-carbon behavior.
At COP28, Ant Forest also launched the "Reducing Plastic for Nature" initiative to promote plastic pollution control and protect the natural environment polluted by plastics such as the ocean. The first batch of more than 30 Chinese and foreign companies joined the initiative, including well-known brands such as InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), Mengniu, RT-Mart, Starbucks and Unilever.
It is understood that the "Plastic Reduction for Nature" initiative aims to promote positive plastic reduction goals, establish a green consumption ecology, innovate incentive mechanisms, and strengthen international exchanges to encourage more public participation in plastic pollution control actions. The initiative also places special emphasis on raising public awareness of plastic reduction through digital technologies and internet platforms, and creating examples that can be used as a reference.
Wen Taoye. Edited by Song Yuting.
Proofreading Fu Chunshu.