Jiang Xiaojuan, President of the China Industrial Economics Association: Make good use of digital technology to promote green transformation

Green development is a prominent feature of Chinese modernization. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) made comprehensive arrangements for promoting green development. Green development is not a short-term problem, but a complex system project, which is a top-level requirement that accompanies the whole process of modernization.

With the continuous increase of China's economic aggregate, the contradiction between resource and energy demand and environmental and ecological capacity constraints has become more and more prominent, and environmental protection and resource conservation have become urgent requirements for China's development. China's commitment to the world to achieve the "dual carbon" goal has been highly praised and concerned by the international community. From a multi-faceted point of view, adhering to environmental protection and ecological development is a long-term development requirement, and it will not be relaxed at any time. Only a long-term sustainable strategy is that it can be both green and developing.

Specific to the areas along the Yangtze River, in order to achieve the goal of protecting the Yangtze River and promoting local economic development at the same time, it is necessary to unify environmental protection, emission reduction, and green development. An important support is digital transformation and all-round digital development. Make good use of digital technology, emission reduction is development; Make good use of digital technology, greening is development.

Digital technology facilitates the green transformation and development of all scenarios and chains. Only by introducing digital technology to promote the improvement of green energy use efficiency and realize the growth of quantitative expansion and qualitative improvement can we have a real starting point.

On the one hand, digital technology can enable the green transformation of all scenarios and the entire industry chain. To achieve green transformation and development, a large number of technological innovations and application promotion are required in various scenarios such as energy structure reform, energy conservation and emission reduction at the production and consumption ends. Digital technology, as a key technology for green transformation, will play a major role.

For example, in the field of energy production, digital technology has great potential to improve the collaborative interaction of the whole link of source, grid, load and storage. In the industrial field, it can help traditional industries reduce energy consumption and achieve lean production; In the field of construction, it can be applied to different stages such as design, construction, and operation to reduce the comprehensive energy consumption of the whole life cycle; In the field of transportation, it can improve the transportation efficiency of the transportation network, reduce carbon emissions, and realize smart transportation; In terms of carbon management, the accuracy and convenience of carbon emission data can be improved, and the digitalization of carbon asset management and carbon emission tracking can be realized.

Another example is the use of digital technology for environmental protection monitoring. The Yangtze River fishing ban was originally a "guerrilla" between the monitoring party and the fishing party, but now after adding the full Internet of Things system, it can be accurately monitored regardless of day, night or foggy weather. Digital technology helps environmental and ecological supervision to be efficient and accurate.

On the other hand, digital technology promotes greener development. To achieve the "dual carbon" goal, we must go through the two-legged path of increasing green and reducing carbon, coordinate the increment and stock, and take a transformation path driven by new technologies to gradually expand and replace gray stocks.

It is necessary to rely on innovative incremental substitution of carbon reduction. Relying on the substitution of green technologies such as low-carbon and zero-carbon, it is necessary to ensure that the new output has a significant reduction in carbon emissions, thereby diluting the carbon emission concentration in the total output. It is necessary to form a new national and regional carbon reduction responsibility system, and incorporate innovative "carbon substitution" into the accounting system for carbon emission reduction, which not only encourages carbon reduction, but also encourages green expansion, so as to ensure the formation of a dual dynamic mechanism for green growth. While reducing emissions, we should vigorously develop new green industries so that the contraction of production capacity can be offset.

The author is president of the China Society of Industrial Economics