On this year's World Environment Day, Hillhouse announced its carbon neutrality goal: to achieve carbon neutrality of GHG emissions at the company's operational level by 2021, and total GHG emissions from hillhouse's historical operations since its inception（20 years）by 2025. Carbonstop provides Hillhouse with carbon inventory service and comprehensive carbon neutrality technical support, including carbon inventory of Hillhouse's office and operation, setting scientific emission reduction targets, planning carbon reduction paths, and formulating carbon management plans for the group. Carbonstop is also honored to discuss the low-carbon path of financial investment with Hillhouse this time, and also gain valuable experience and new understanding of low-carbon solutions for investment industry. Based on the analysis of the companies proposing carbon neutrality and the recent cases they have worked with, the Carbonstop team has developed a principle for the goal of carbon neutrality: THE CREO Principle 1）To achieve carbon neutrality in any industry, the first step is always to quantify your emissions . Only after a clear understanding of the status of their carbon emissions and their position in the industry can they take targeted measures to reduce emissions and lay a foundation for carbon neutrality. 2）After determining their own carbon emissions, the first thing companies should do is to think about how to reduce emissions scientifically, rather than choosing to offset carbon neutrality. Disclose carbon emission information, formulate scientific carbon targets, and set realistic carbon emission reduction paths from the perspective of enterprises themselves, such as reducing energy consumption through technological innovation, adopting renewable energy, resource recycling and utilization, and choosing data center sites in areas rich in natural resources, etc. 3) Engaging: We should not only reduce emissions by ourselves, but also drive ecological partners to reduce emissions together. The financial investment industry should make better use of platform advantages and integrate resources to achieve carbon neutrality of the whole industry chain. It should not only manage its own carbon emissions, but also promote carbon neutrality of the invested enterprises. 4)Offsetting: This is the last step, when the enterprise has done all possible things, how to deal with the unavoidable carbon emissions? Offsetting! You can choose to plant trees or buy carbon credits to offset the inevitable carbon emissions, to achieve "zero emissions". There is a problem, those used for corporate carbon offsets reduction projects or carbon sink project in principle itself also will produce carbon emissions, the lifecycle emissions, such as photovoltaic (pv) and forest .We suggested that in the future carbon offsets project itself in the whole life cycle should achieve carbon neutral first .In this way, it is more scientific and reasonable. Carbonstop is the first software and consulting solution provider focusing on carbon emission management in China. Founded in 2011 by Yan Luhui, a computer master from Oxford University, Carbonstop is a national high-tech enterprise. Up to now, it has served more than 1000 enterprises and institutions, including UN Environment Program, National Development and Reform Commission, Alibaba, JD.com, Baidu, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Schneider, IKEA, China Civil Aviation Group, China Building Materials Group, Hangzhou Marathon, Jiannan Spring Antarctic Tour, United Nations Climate Conference, etc. At the same time, Carbonstop is the formulation unit of China's relevant carbon emission standards, which is in a leading position in the industry. By 2020, Carbonstop has reduced customers' carbon emissions by more than 100 million tons and indirectly influenced low-carbon behavior change of 800 million people through customers' products. Carbonstop will also push China to cut emissions by more than 1 billion tons over the next five years. In the future, we will firmly adhere to our original aspiration, create long-term value for customers and society, and become the most solid partner of Chinese enterprises on the road of carbon neutrality.

On 10th May, 2021, Carbonstop, China’s first carbon emissions management software and consulting solutions provider, announced it had raised 50 million RMB Series A funding from Hillhouse Capital and Matrix Partners China, marking the latest move by the two leading institutions to increase their stake in “carbon neutralization” infrastructure.  Founded in March, 2011, Carbonstop’s offering include customized carbon management software and SaaS services, carbon accounting and consulting, and a consumer-facing carbon account platform. It has serviced more than 1,000 clients over the past decade, including Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com, Vanke, Microsoft, CNOOC, among others. This round of financing will be used to enhance its SaaS offerings and the standardization and intelligentization of its carbon management products.  A Trillion Dollar Market Ready to Take Off In September, 2020, at the 75th session of the UN General Assembly, China pledged to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Over this year’s National People’s Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference sessions, “carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality” were for the first time included in the Chinese government work report as one of the priorities for 2021. As early as 2013, China already launched some local carbon trading pilot projects as a main means towards carbon neutrality. It is expected that a national carbon trading market will be in place in June, 2021, with 2200+ power companies being the first batch to trade in the market and over ten thousand firms will be involved in carbon trading later on.  Globally, over 200 international companies and institutions have already put forward their carbon neutrality goals and hundreds of thousands of suppliers and sustainable innovative firms are conducting or forced to conduct carbon management and carbon information disclosure. According to the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development of Tsinghua University, China will have to invest 3.7 trillion RMB annually in the next three decades to make itself carbon neutral and in the next 5 years, hundreds of thousands of companies will undertake carbon management and cut carbon emissions. On the other hand, China’s sustainable consumer market is booming. According to the Survey on Green Consumption of the Chinese Consumers Report (2019) issued by the Association for Research and Promotion of Eco-civilization, 83.34% of the respondents support green consumption and 46.75% said they ‘support it very much’. Luke Li, Partner at Hillhouse Capital said: “The global economy is set to shift from a high carbon emission model to a low or even zero emission model. Leading companies have already set up targets for carbon disclosure, management and neutrality. The carbon management industry is in urgent need of solutions that are more digital and intelligent. Meanwhile, as sustainable consumption gathers momentum, disclosure of product carbon footprint has become even more important.” The “Carbon Manager” behind Giants - A Decade of Commitment After graduating from Oxford University, Luhui Yan joined a leading UK carbon consulting firm before returning to China to start his own business. “A decade ago, there was barely any company in China working on carbon management, let alone carbon neutrality. But I believed that the world would in one day wake up to the challenge of climate change and soon companies would start to pay attention to carbon emissions,” said Yan, Founder and CEO of Carbonstop, “It was like sailing uncharted waters 10 years ago, but now I can see all of my forecasts are becoming a reality.” “Without quantifying, (carbon) management is impossible. Only by measuring carbon emissions in numbers can companies and organizations know where they need improve. With decade-long experience in carbon management, plus China’s largest carbon emissions factor database, what Carbonstop provides is the most fundamental and important carbon data accounting services.” Currently, Carbonstop offers carbon emissions management software, carbon management consulting and a carbon account platform, among others.  The carbon management software helps organizations measure, analyze, manage and report their carbon emissions. Clients can choose customized software or the SaaS platform. Currently the clients include government entities, emissions control organizations, carbon exchanges and carbon assets management firms, etc. (Click here for more information about the software). To reduce carbon emissions, organizations first need to measure the emissions, a process that will provides data support for their carbon strategies and execution. Carbonstop’s consultancy services include carbon accounting, products’ carbon footprint, emissions reduction accounting, carbon disclosure and carbon management training, etc. It has also created the CREO (i.e. calculating, reducing, engaging and offsetting) strategy towards carbon neutrality (Click here for more information), helping companies like Baidu and Hillhouse Capital with their carbon-neutral endeavor.  The carbon account credits individuals’ low-carbon behaviors (for instance: one day without driving) into their carbon account as a reference for incentives in the future. For example, Carbonstop is a partner of and major low-carbon scenario developer for Ant Forest, helping it incentivize 550 million users to participate in low-carbon activities and plant more than 220 million trees.   Since its inception, Carbonstop has helped a number of leading Chinese companies with their green and sustainable development, servicing over 1000 clients, including 50 Fortune 500 companies and leading institutions, such as Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com, Vanke, Starbucks, Microsoft, Hillhouse Capital,  Asia Green Fund, UNEP, the National Development and Reform Commission of China, The Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China, Energy Foundation China, World Wildlife Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. A One-stop Carbon Management Platform - Ccloud In addition to customized services, Carbonstop has also developed a number of standardized products such as the Carbon Intelligence and Ccloud. The Carbon Intelligence is a not-for-profit mini program supported by an emissions information database whereby individuals and companies can conveniently search for carbon information. An important component of Carbon Intelligence, the Carbon Emissions Factor Database is a cornerstone not only of the product but also the entire carbon management industry.  All products and behaviors generate carbon emissions, known as the Carbon Emission Factor. A simple equation to calculate carbon emissions is Carbon Emissions =Activity data*the Carbon Emission Factor. Over the past 9 years, Carbonstop has been accumulating carbon emission factors data from more than 200 countries. With over 100,000 data entries, its database is now the largest in China and becoming the infrastructure for carbon emissions management.  (Carbon Emission Factor Database) (Scan the QR code to try Carbon Intelligence) Embracing the trend of carbon neutrality to help Chinese companies better manage their carbon emissions, Carbonstop distilled best practices from its experience of serving thousands of clients and developed China’s first SaaS platform for carbon management - Ccloud. Ccloud is a corporate-facing carbon footprint assessment software that was developed following life cycle assessment principles and is compliant with ISO 14067 and PAS 2050 standards. It covers all industries and includes its 100,000 plus emission factors for clients to use. In addition to products’ carbon footprint accounting, Ccloud also plans to add more features such as corporate carbon emissions accounting, scenario-based carbon reduction accounting, conference carbon emission accounting, carbon disclosure and carbon neutrality to make itself a one-stop-shop platform for emissions management and carbon neutrality for Chinese companies.  Lingye Zuo, Partner at Matrix Partners China commented: “Carbonstop has been committed to carbon emissions accounting and management for a decade. It has accumulated rich experience and developed a complete emission factors database. It has also achieved standardization of carbon management software. Its founder, Luhui Yan, is one of the earliest in China to engage in carbon emissions management. He has been a steadfast practitioner with a good reputation in the industry. We look forward to Carbonstop coming up with more carbon management software services to contribute to China’s carbon neutrality goal.” The Decade Ahead: Enabling China’s carbon neutrality transition As of 2020, Carbonstop had helped its clients reduce more than 100 million tons of emissions, impacting over 800 million people indirectly via its products and services. Due to its outstanding contribution to the 12th and 13th UN Sustainable Development Goals, i.e. “sustainable consumption and production” and “climate action”, Carbonstop are recognized by the UNEP, Dubai World Expo, the SEE Foundation of China and the Energy Foundation China (Click here for more about Carbonstop’s awards). In the next 5 years, it will continue to contribute to China’s endeavor to cut emissions by over 1 billion tons. “The alignment between its tremendous positive impact on the environment and its business model makes Carbonstop a milestone investment opportunity that will make a real difference in the world.” said Yijing Wang, the exclusive finance advisor of this deal.  “On the other hand, individual consumers are also pushing for companies’ low-carbon transformation,” said Yan, “10 years ago, people seldom paid attention to companies’ carbon reduction, but this is now mandatory. I believe that in 10 years, low carbon consumption is also the trend forward. We will be the bridge between products’ low-carbon transformation and the sustainable consumption market, and strive to provide carbon footprint information for every product.” “Apart from the funding itself, support from the two leading investment institutions Hillhouse Capital and Matrix Partners will make us more firm in our mission and remind us to remain committed to doing the right things even when the industry is in strong tail wind, to create long-term value for our clients and the society,” added Yan, “we will keep improving our core products to make ourselves the best partner for Chinese companies in their journey towards carbon neutrality.”

Recently, the Carbonstop team took an in-depth look at e-commerce enterprises, assessed the total carbon emissions of e-commerce, and compared the carbon emissions of online and offline shopping. In addition, the report on Total GHG Emissions of E-commerce Enterprises in China and the Report on Comparison of Online and offline Greenhouse Gas Emissions in China were published. The core conclusion: 1. According to a detailed calculation of carbon footprint, China's e-commerce generated 53.26 million tons of CO2e in 2019. In the next five years, it will maintain rapid growth, and it is estimated that the carbon emission from e-commerce will reach 116 million tons in 2025. 2. China's e-commerce carbon emission sources mainly include: packaging, accounting for 18%; Logistics, about 29 percent; Office, about 26%; Data centers, about 23 percent; Warehousing, about 4%. 3. Carbon emission sources of online shopping include transportation and express transportation, accounting for 29.16%; Architecture-office, accounting for 26.12%; Construction and warehousing, about 3.88%; Information-data center, about 22.78%, Information-consumer terminal power consumption, about 0.02%; Packaging - Express packaging, about 18.04%. 4. The main sources of carbon emissions from offline shopping include: transport-transportation before goods enter stores, accounting for 13.03%; transport-consumers’ traffic emissions, accounting for 35.87%; construction-store operation (generally including office), accounting for 47.11%; and packaging-plastic bags, accounting for 1.05%. 5. According to the study and calculation of carbon footprint, online shopping is lower than offline shopping, and the carbon emission of an online purchase and an offline purchase of the same goods are 1094.92gCO2e and 1360.24gCO2e respectively. In recent years, with the continuous development of e-commerce, its scale continues to expand, its importance in the national economy is becoming increasingly prominent, the living penetration rate of residents is becoming higher and higher, but the rapid development has also brought a series of environmental problems and energy problems. China has announced that it will peak carbon emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060, making it one of the eight key tasks for 2021. Then, how much impact does e-commerce have on carbon emissions, and how does e-commerce contribute to the realization of "carbon peak and carbon neutrality"? The CREO carbon neutralization pathway proposed by the Carbonstop team involves quantifying your carbon emissions first, i.e. Calculating them all. Only after we know our own emissions, can we take appropriate mitigation actions to lay a solid foundation for achieving carbon neutral. The total amount study mainly evaluates the carbon emissions of e-commerce from five areas: packaging, logistics, data center, office and storage. The study found that e-commerce generates 53.26 million tons of carbon emissions a year, accounting for 2.5 percent of the total emissions from the tertiary industry, and about 10 billion trees are needed annually to neutralize its carbon emissions. Among them, logistics 15.54 million tons, accounting for 29 percent; 13.92 million tons of office work, or 26%; 12.14 million tons, or 23%, for data centers; Packaging 9.61 million tons, accounting for 18%; Warehousing 2.07 million tons, accounting for 4%.   Emissions Forecast by 2025 - China's express delivery volume is expected to reach 150 billion pieces in 2025, up 80% in five years from more than 80 billion pieces in 2020, according to the forecast. If no measures are taken, it is estimated that the carbon emissions of e-commerce enterprises will reach over 116 million tons in 2025, accounting for 1.1% of China's total emissions in 2025. Compared with 2020, the emissions will increase by about 50 million tons in five years, with a growth rate of 73% and an average annual growth rate of 14.7%. According to the analysis, China's projected emissions increase during the 14th five-year plan period is only 200 million tons, and the emission increase of e-commerce enterprises will account for 25% of China's emissions increase during the 14th five-year plan period. The main conclusions of the Report on Comparison of Online and offline Greenhouse Gas Emissions in China are as follows: 1. Based on the basic conditions in the article, online shopping is lower in carbon emission than offline shopping. The carbon emission of an online purchase and an offline purchase of the same item is 1094.92gCO2e and 1360.24gCO2e respectively. 2. Carbon emission sources of online shopping include: traffic-express transportation, accounting for 29.16%; building-office, 26.12%; building-storage, 3.88%; information-data center, 22.78%; information-consumer terminal power consumption, about 0.02%; package-express packaging, about 18.04%. 3. The main sources of carbon emissions from offline shopping include: transport-transportation before goods enter stores, accounting for 13.03%; transport-consumers’ traffic emissions, accounting for 35.87%; construction-store operation (generally including office), accounting for 47.11%; and packaging-plastic bags, accounting for 1.05%. 4. Carbon emissions from online and offline shopping are grouped into four main areas: transportation, construction, information and packaging. For transportation, the online total is about 319.30gCO2e, and the offline total is about 665.14gCO2e. Construction: online total 328.50gCO2e, offline total 684.10gCO2e. In the information section, online emissions total 249.63GCo2E, while offline emissions may include inventory management systems, which are included in all energy consumption calculations for building operations. Not considering the packaging of the goods themselves, but only considering the extra packaging part in the shopping process, the online emission is 197.49gCO2e, and the offline emission is about 11.00gCO2e. 5. The calculation is based on the average shopping situation, and the carbon emission of specific products will be closely related to the actual process. The specific emission value will be related to the type of product, the place of delivery of shopping goods, express transportation, whether the cold chain is needed, the actual energy consumption level of the building, users' travel habits, and the number of users' purchase orders in a single trip, etc.

Recently, Baidu released the 2020 Low Carbon Development Report on its official website, and Carbonstop participated in and supported the preparation of the report. As the first carbon emission management software and consulting service provider in China, Carbonstop has been striving for the goal of "making every product have a carbon footprint" since its establishment.  The Carbonstop was commissioned by Baidu to provide low-carbon consulting services and technical support for its special report on low-carbon development. The theme of Baidu's 2020 Low Carbon Development Report is "Sustainable Development with Green Water and Green Mountains", which highlights Baidu's efforts and contributions to low carbon development in 2020 from four aspects, namely: advocating green life, building a green heart, entering a green journey and looking into the future. In this report, Baidu introduced its efforts in green and intelligent travel. In April 2020, Baidu Apollo released the "ACE Traffic Engine", which integrates autonomous driving, vehicl-road coordination and efficient travel, and promotes the intelligent and low-carbon transformation of the whole transportation industry chain.  The report introduces the carbon reduction efforts in IDC, baidu all self-built 2020 data center PUE average value is 1.14, most energy-efficient monomer data center PUE 1.08, both reached the same industry leading level in China, and baidu also developed multiple data center energy efficiency technology, and be included in advance technology for green data center published by ministry of industry.In the report, Baidu released the company's carbon emissions for 2019 and 2020, setting targets for scientific low-carbon action. Carbonstop is also very honored to cooperate with Baidu this time and participate in the writing of the report. In the future, we will continue to work together with Baidu to achieve China's goal of reaching carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutral by 2060.

Recently, Mr. Yan Luhui, CEO and Founder of Carbonstop, was invited by the United Nations Global Compact Young SDG Innovators Program to share the topic of "Carbon Neutral and Corporate Carbon Management in China" online. The UN Global Compact Young SDG Innovators Program was launched in 2019 to help young leaders of UN Global Compact member companies learn how to use the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and new technologies to develop new products, services and business models. To help participating companies improve communication, collaboration and innovation in cross-sector sustainability efforts, further transfer SDGs into social and economic values, and develop future leadership for sustainable development. Mr.Yan detailed analysis for everybody in the share of China's carbon neutral commitment as well as the recent various carbon neutral policy, and detailed explained the necessity of enterprise to go carbon neutral. Enterprises should start from six aspects   1. Obtain the support of the top leadership to establish a carbon management team 2. Conduct a comprehensive carbon inventory of the company 3. Tool support. Enterprises should have comprehensive carbon management software covering the group level 4. Plan and disclose the company's carbon reduction actions 5. Manage carbon asset  6. Disclose carbon emission timely Companies are the basic building blocks of social and economic activities, which constitute the absolute major source of carbon emissions. More and more companies, cities, and some countries have put forward their own carbon neutral target timetables. On January 25, 2021, President Xi jinping in the world economy forum "Davos agenda" said: "achieving 2030 carbon peak and 2060 carbon neutral, China need to be extremely arduous effort". At the end of the sharing, Mr.Yan introduced Carbonstop. Carbonstop is the first provider of carbon emission management software and consulting services in China, and has provided professional carbon management solutions for thousands of well-known enterprises. Carbonstop has always had a desire to connect people with the environment, and the way we do that is by making every product have its own carbon footprint. In the future, Carbonstop is willing to cooperate with more companies and organizations that share the same low-carbon dream and contribute their share to the early realization of China's carbon neutral goal.