 who have actually entered this room. So thank you so much for your interest in coming over on today's SOAS China Institute Seminar. My name is Huan Zou, I'm a reader in international management at the School of Finance and Management and at SOAS University of London. I'm quite delighted today, we actually going to have a very fantastic seminar which is exactly the perfect topic under the conference, the COP26 now actually entered the second week in Glasgow. There are lots of discussion for the world leaders to discuss about how important we achieve certain kinds of collective cooperation among over 130 countries. So today's topic we're going to focus particular on one of the key issues talking about carbon neutrality which, you know, the different countries have their own agendas. And now before I introduce Professor Mingxu, today's speaker, I would like to have certain kinds of housekeeping issues. So for the webinar, you're more than welcome to raise any questions or comments through the Q&A box at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. And if you would like to raise the question anonymously, definitely you're welcome to do so. But if you can let me know, you know, a little bit more about your background and then this will definitely help me to actually understand the question that you propose and forward to Professor Mingxu to answer it. But your wish will be definitely respected, neither your name or other things which will identify your identity and profile will not be disclosed at all. So as you can see on this slide, today's speaker is Professor Mingxu. So he actually hosts the Professorship in School of Environment and Sustainability in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Michigan. He actually also hosts an Algoradirectorship of the China program at University. And to be honest that he's such an emerging style in this particular area because he has received a number of important awards and to recognize his work in the environmental sustainability aspect. So for example, that he received in 2015, robbed a low-dice medal from International Society for Industrial Ecology and the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award in 2016 and the Water, Air, Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from American Society of Civil Engineer in 2021. Definitely there is a long list that I would not really have the time and to actually go through. But I would like to thank, you know, today Ming will give us a very good understanding of his research in carbon neutrality and also particularly his interdisciplinary research expertise to bring the climate change and how industry ecology can come into the picture will actually help us to think about what exactly the different multiple stakeholders can contribute to this big agenda. Now I will hand over to Professor Xu for the presentation and then we will come back with the Q&A for some inspiring and exciting conversation on this topic. So here the floor is yours, Ming. Great, can you hear me okay? Okay, thank you for the nice introduction and for the invitation to participate in this seminar series. So as Huai mentioned, so the topic of the day, I want to talk about carbon neutrality and the life cycle thinking. So carbon neutrality I think is pretty popular terms these days, especially given the what's happening right now in Glasgow. Life cycle thinking, that is a way of thinking in our research area, in our research field. So I want to combine those two together to see how life cycle thinking and our research can help carbon neutrality, right? So today I'll have divide this talk in roughly three parts. First, what is carbon neutrality and how can we achieve carbon neutrality by my own opinion? What is a life cycle thinking and how can help carbon neutrality? And lastly, what are some of the challenges and the solutions in life cycle analysis? Particularly some of the research we are doing to address those challenges. So first, what is carbon neutrality and how can we achieve carbon neutrality? So since this is a seminar hosted by the China Institute, I want to start with China. Last year in September, China has officially pledged to achieve carbon peak by 2030 and then on the lower left corner, you will see a graph I draw using my hand. There's no serious research behind it. It's just how I think China will, the pathway for China to achieve carbon peak and the carbon neutrality until 2060. And there are many research groups are doing serious research on that, like identify the pathways and identify technology policy and et cetera, which can help us to achieve those pathways. So, but in general, I think right now in 2020, right now China generate about 10 giga tonne of carbon dioxide emissions a year. Since the peak will happen in 2030, I think from now to 2030, around 2030, the emission, annual emission will still going up. In 2030 to 2035, roughly those five years, five each years, the emission, annual emission will reach to a plateau and probably, a little bit up, a little bit down, but then up to 2035, roughly that time, the kind of technology and market conditions and policies to achieve rapid reduction of carbon emissions are probably are ready by then. Those are not ready at this point. So, they are ready by around 2035, then we will probably see a rapid decline of carbon emissions over the years. And by the end of this period, after 2050 or even 2055, most of the emissions that can be reduced have been reduced, but there are still some emissions that cannot be removed easily or avoided easily. So then, technology, additional carbon sink, forestry, et cetera, will come into play to neutralize the additional emissions. So by 2060, if China achieves carbon neutrality, it doesn't mean that there's no emissions, it's just mean whatever emissions you generate will be offset by some other mechanisms. So since this is for people familiar with China, so this is a very top national strategy, national policy for China. So this will not just be a matter of emission reduction, not a matter of just energy transition. As President Xi said, it will be extensive in the profound systemic reform for the economy. So every industry, every sectors, everybody will be affected one way or another by this process, right? So this is what's happening in China, but if we look at globally, by June 20th this year, there were 137 countries to carbon neutrality. So this is a map, probably the words are too small, so we don't need to worry too much about that. Essentially what they tell us is that most of those 37 countries have committed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 in line with Paris agreement goals, some later, a little bit later, right? So what happened in the last week at COP26 was that two countries, big countries have also made a commitment. Australia committed to reach carbon neutrality they call net zero emissions in 2050 and India committed to reach net zero emission by 2070, right? So after those two countries joined, most of the main economies in the world have joined this race to achieve carbon neutrality. So carbon neutrality has become almost like a global consensus right now. So how do we achieve carbon neutrality? There are technology, there are technical solutions, there are policy solutions, there are market solutions, but no matter what kind of solutions, I think they can all be characterizing to broader production-based approach and the consumption-based approach. So production-based approach essentially means let's take inventory, take a start of who immediate how much emissions, right? The power sector generate this much, the transportation sector generate that much and then let's just try to figure out how to make those big emitters reduce their emissions, right? Which power plants generate how much emissions next year through policy mechanism or through technology, through market mechanisms. Let's just try to get these power plants reduce this emission by 20%, next year 40%, eventually by 2050 or 2060, it goes to zero, right? So this will be a project mostly is like top-down policy driven. So like carbon trading, which is popular in the US, in Europe, and also essentially is a production-based approach. So essentially the heavy polluting industries which are included in the carbon trading market are given quotas for emissions for next year. And then if you need more quotas, you go to the market to buy from somebody else. And if you have extra that you don't need to use, you can sell those quotas, emission quotas in the market and get some money back, right? But the market, carbon market essentially just as a market mechanism to allocate, effectively allocate those emission quotas. But essentially it's still a production-based approach. In contrast, there's another big category of approach I call consumption-based approach. So in consumption-based approach, worry about who actually generate how much emissions. We only need to worry about one particular phase of the socioeconomic consumption, right? So let's take a look at the consumption here. If we can calculate, measure the carbon footprint of this consumption, use a consumption of a car, consumption of some sort of service, right? And then we figure out some ways to reduce the carbon footprint of this consumption. And if we can reduce the carbon footprint of this consumption to zero, that means the whole supply chain that supports this consumption are reduced, the emission of this whole supply chain are reduced to zero. So that's essentially is carbon neutrality, right? So then a consumption-based approach is the bottom-up approach mostly driven. There, the key concept for consumption-based approach is a carbon footprint. Carbon footprint essentially means the supply chain emission from all the components in the supply chain that supports a particular kind of consumption. So the carbon footprint and supply chain emission is what we call life cycle thinking in our research field. Of course, production-based, consumption-based, those are coming hand in hand and they're not against each other. So we don't need to choose one or another, they work together, right? We need both. So in addition to those countries, there are many so-called non-state actors also commit to make commitments relevant to carbon neutrality. So for the actors, mostly what they committed was to reduce their carbon footprint from the consumption-based. So this is from by October 19th this year. There were 194 countries. This is different from the previous 137, 137 countries committed to carbon neutrality. But here it says just 194 countries adopt some actions contributing to carbon neutrality, right? It's more broader, but also 200 plus regions, 1,200 plus investors, 2,000 organizations, 7,000 plus companies and 10,000 plus cities have committed to do something for carbon neutrality, right? So here is another graph shows 4,500 companies, their commitments to carbon neutrality, some have committed to keep carbon neutrality, some are committed to reduce emissions by certain percentage, for example, right? So give you some examples, for example, at least in Microsoft has promised to achieve, not only just carbon neutrality, but carbon negative by 2030, right? Not only reduce their to zero, but even further to be negative. So the scope, the carbon emission they considered as their footprint include two parts. First is this red portion, which is the emission coming from Microsoft itself, Microsoft office, Microsoft factories, et cetera. But the majority of the emission they want to reduce is these blue bars, which is the soft supply chain emissions, right? Which means those are emissions coming from Microsoft suppliers, not Microsoft itself, right? But Microsoft will committed to reduce those emissions as well. So those are essentially a life cycle thinking and also carbon footprint. Walmart, Walmart also committed to achieve zero emission by 2040, right? Their commitment also includes not only just emissions coming from their stores, from their offices, also from the supply chain, their supply chain. So anything that Walmart sells has a unique supply chain, even though most likely is a very globalized supply chain. So those emissions coming from the supply chains are also will be considered by Walmart to achieve their emission reduction targets by 2040, right? So there are many other examples, right? So why do those companies do this, right? I think first of all, they have a lot of challenges because of carbon neutrality and because of climate change. First, for example, see change. For example, in China, the carbon trading market right now only includes a power sector, but there are clear indication that heavy industries will be included in the carbon trading system in next couple of years, right? So for those industry or transportation industry companies in those sectors, they know their new policy will come in. So this is a challenge for them. They need to get prepared. Societal pressure. So Microsoft has committed to achieve carbon negative by 2030, it's competitors in the same industry will have a pressure from a permanent society, right? Investor demand now, right? These days, a lot of the investors in addition to looking for going out to returns, but also for considerably so-called ESG, environment social and governance of their companies, businesses they invest in. Clear environment aspect, climate change, carbon emission reduction is a major component. Consumer preference, you guys in the UK, you should know this much better than I do. There are many new generation of consumers that are very environmentally conscious and the climate conscious. So they have new preference in terms of the products and services they buy. Export risk for countries, export products to other countries, especially in Europe, carbon border adjustment tax, Europe Union have start to this new policy that will charge exporting companies by the emissions, based on the emissions they generated during the production of those products. So those will be another challenge for those companies that exporting. Most more directly supply chain risk due to climate change. The flood happened in Europe this summer and also the flood in China has posed a lot of short-term impact on some supply chains for some industries. In addition to those challenges, there are also opportunities. New market for companies that are doing good in terms of carbon neutrality and also if a company has low carbon or carbon neutral products that will gain edge. New image, socially responsible companies also will receive more attract and retain the consumers. New revenue sources. So if a company participate in a carbon trading scheme and they could get financial returns from the emissions that reduce. So here's an interesting story happened in May this year. Dutch Shell was sued by some environmental NGOs in the Netherlands and the court ruled that Shell need to cut their supply chain emissions by 45, by 2030 percent. So this is a very unique case because the court ruled that Shell need to reduce the emissions but the emissions are including not only just the emission coming from Shell itself but it's the supply chain emissions. So this is a very clear indication that policy and law makers are emission induction from the supply chain perspective not only just looking at the emissions directly coming from somebody. So supply chain essentially means supply chain essentially means carbon footprint which is a life cycle thinking in our field. So to monitor and reduce carbon footprint essentially is to reduce chain emissions. And if every product's carbon footprint becomes zero then our society will achieve carbon neutrality. So that's first what is carbon neutrality and how can we achieve that. The second I want to talk a little bit more about what is the life cycle thinking and how can help carbon neutrality. So life cycle thinking essentially is to say that when we consider a product's life the environmental impact we should consider it's whole so-called life cycle. A product's life cycle includes from the raw material extraction to material processing, manufacturing, assembling, use and in the life and in the life some parts of the material some part of products are recycled reused back to this supply chain system and some becomes waste being finally exposed. So environmental impacts happening at every stage of this supply, this life cycle. So the true environmental impact of a product should include the impacts coming from all those processes. Why do we need a life cycle thing a difference can life cycle thinking make? Here's a very classic example based on a paper published in Science in 1991 which compared the life use and emissions of paper products and plastic products for example, paper bags and plastic bags. The comparison to the equivalency so that means the whatever number of plastic bags is equivalent to whatever number of paper bags they can carry things for the same number of times. So when we talk about the plastics this kind of images often pops up which is why we have a lot of policies against the use of plastics. But if you think about this from a life cycle perspective these kind of things happened only at one particular phase of the life cycle of the plastics which is the end of life when plastic comes waste and if we don't treat them properly and just discard them in the environment this is what happened, what happened. But if you think about this question from the entire life cycle perspective from the material extraction to end of life and only just ecosystem but also the impact on energy use, air emissions based on this research, plastic is much better than papers because from in the life cycle it use less energy, generally less air emissions. But of course this is not to say that we should use continue to use plastics especially single use plastic. This is only saying to say that when we think about the products environment impact it really depends depends on a lot of factors. First, what is the system scope? Scope of system, system boundary what are included in the life cycle? Are we only looking at one particular phase of the life or the whole life cycle? And second, what environment impacts are we considering? If we only considering the impact on ecosystem of course plastic is worse because it takes a long time to degrade in the environment but if our concerns are energy use and the air emissions, air pollution then the answer might be different. So life cycle thinking give us essentially a new perspective to impact on the product. So life cycle thinking has been used a lot actually in public policy in a global scale we know that IPCC produce any assessment report every couple of years. The most recent one is six released in this next year. So the last one was released in 2013 and 2014 there was a lot of context in the reports talking about the issue called emission embodied in trade. Meaning producing country producing products generate emissions during the production but the products are produced for another country's consumption. So which country should be responsible for that emission the producing country or the consuming country or both, right? So that actually also is one of the topics that those conferences have been discussing. So the behind the thing this is essentially producing from in one country and then consuming in another country. At the regional national level in China the industry and the information has serious policies around so-called eco design product to encourage companies to design their product for life cycle environmental impact minimization not only just to have less energy consumption less environment impact during the use phase but from the whole life cycle. In Europe, product environmental footprint some products are required to disclose their so-called product environmental so environment footprint is a life cycle thinking. And also as I mentioned earlier the part of the EU Green Deal has covered both mechanism in discussion which will impose new taxes imported products based on the emissions generated from the production in the country. So that's also kind of a life cycle thinking. At a company level, many companies are doing social responsibility activities while the key things they do is to calculate the measure and disclose their monitor their carbon footprint or water footprint for some companies that were close to water. No matter what kind of footprint it's a life cycle thinking, a life cycle concept. There's a life cycle assessment or LCA. LCA, a life cycle assessment is a methodology it's essentially as the implementation of the life and we use this model to a quantitatively measure the environmental impacts of a product for a life cycle. So the method is also pretty straightforward. We just figure out what processes are involved in the life cycle of the product and then I see at each process how much what kind of resource have been used how much what kind of energy been used and how much what kind of waste has been generated. So here we're talking about environmental impact is broadly speaking, not only just emissions but a resource to use energy use and other emissions waste. So the first LCA actually people are think the first LCA was conducted by Coca-Cola in 1970s when they was planning to introduce bottles the buried containers, right? So they did economic analysis, they did food safety analysis and then they want to see what's the environmental impact to avoid accusations from environmental NGOs. So they outsourced a third party group to analysis for by back then it was not called life cycle assessment but essentially it was a life cycle assessment. So they eventually they figured out that during from the life cycle plastic bottles actually reduce environmental impacts into in some categories. Based on that result and together with their no economic food safety analysis results they introduced the plastic bottles as a buried containers. Right now, today, life cycle assessment used in industries and academia. So what life cycle thinking can do for carbon neutral? Well, I think there are three roles that life cycle thinking can play to achieve carbon neutrality. And first, since this seminar organized by China Chinese name called UD function which means life cycle thinking, life cycle analysis can help us to identify those key processes in a product's life which generate larger amount of emissions. So that's where we can make potentially make large amount of reduction through policy of technology improvement. So one of the examples is bioenergy technology. So five, so in this bioenergy was very popular in the market and also from a government perspective there are a lot of some elements. The other two qualify for those subsidies or tax benefits, those bioenergy companies should prove that among many other things their technology, their energy product can reduce life cycle greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuel counterpart. So then those companies ask university professors or consulting companies to do those kind of analysis. So this is a work we did for a company which use switchgrass to produce bioenergy. So this has a lot of growth, a lot of those things in the Midwest plains. So we found that if they can use this to produce electricity or they can use this to produce liquid fuel, right? So we found that to use switchgrass to produce electricity and the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions is lower than producing liquid fuel by ethanol. So lower emissions means potentially lower reduction from the fossil fuel counterpart means it means potentially higher rebate, higher subsidies they can get from the government, right? It's also one of, in future technology development what else can they do or where should they focus on to further reduce green, right? Also we figure out, no matter which pathways you go to electricity or biofuel the most emissions coming from the agriculture process and the logistics, right? Logistics there's not much they can do because the crop is there and the switchgrass is there and the power plants or bio refinery is there and you cannot move them around, right? What they can do is actually in the agriculture phase. There are a lot of uncertainties means different agriculture practice will generate different amount of emissions. And then we look further to see which in the agriculture phase generate emissions. Essentially it's dominated by the emissions produced emission coming from the production of fertilizer and also the emission coming from the fertilizer used essentially the NO2 emissions which is also a very powerful greenhouse gas emissions. So this is essentially tell those companies if you want to further reduce emissions try to reduce your natural fertilizer use using your organic fertilizer or some other ways to reduce fertilizer use. So that's a long example. So the second role that I think life cycle thinking can play for carbon neutralities show good data in Chinese which means oftentimes we see a reduction of emissions happening in one particular phase of the life cycle but actually essentially being shifted to another phase from the whole life cycle from a whole system perspective the emission actually has not been reduced it's just been moved from one place to another place. With a life cycle thinking, a life cycle perspective we can measure the emissions from the whole system scope perspective without those to avoid those environmental burden shifts. So here the classic example is electric vehicle. Chinese here says zero emission. So that's often what people say when they first got introduced electric vehicle. So we know that right now most people will know that zero emission essentially means there's no tail pop emissions from user vehicle but from a life cycle perspective it might be not be the case. So the vehicle, a car's life cycle has two parts. First is this virtual access which means it's a life cycle of the car itself the physical product that we buy. From raw material extraction, steel, glass, copper, et cetera rubber, right? And then processing and making parts, parts being assembled to become a car of the end of life. Some parts of car being recycled we use come back to the system and some become being finally exposed. In addition to have a car we also need energy, right? For gas, car, it's gas then the gas, it's all cycle extraction refinery and processing and then the use during the use phase general lot of emissions also emission from other phases of life cycle. For electric vehicle, the vertical aspect the car itself is largely similar except electric vehicle has a larger battery pack. So the battery itself has its own life cycle raw material from raw material extraction to in a life recycling we use and disposal. For electric vehicle, we don't need to use gas but we need to use energy, electricity. Electricity has to come from somewhere, right? If you use coal to produce electricity we can imagine that the emission coming from the electricity generation probably will be very large. And even if we use solar energy or wind energy the production from the production where wind turbines and solar panels also emissions coming from those processes, right? So using electric vehicle essentially it's just to move shift the tail from a gas car to the power generation. So if our power grid is not clean enough we probably will not reduce too much emissions, right? Here's example from the U.S. In the U.S. this is called a mid west region this is where Michigan is located in the state of Michigan. Freezing the power grid is dominated by coal actually. The use of natural gas and renewable gas relatively less. In northeast, south, Florida and Texas and the west coast those places they use natural gas and renewable energy relatively more. So if you use electricity we as here generate much more emissions and those places you will generate less emissions, right? So lastly, I think life cycle thinking came to I call it women that go means we as I said earlier it's from a consumption perspective to reduce emissions. We help the consumers to know the carbon footprint of the products and help them to make informed decisions purchasing decisions and trend and that signal being transformed translate to the production practices in upstream of supply chain. So I think in Europe you guys will a lot of those products have now have a carbon label for example this muc box of muc has a carbon footprint of 800 gram. So if it's around just consumers by low carbon footprint products that signal will be produced and they will try to reduce their carbon footprint at same time when they improve the quality of the products. So eventually if this label becomes zero to zero carbon footprint then the supply chain there's no emissions coming from the whole supply chain in this meal for this meal, right? All the products we use we buy becomes zero emissions and then the whole society will achieve carbon neutrality almost. So here we have done some work to help people to calculate their carbon footprint and expect electricity consumption for electricity consumption to calculate our carbon footprint essentially is emission factor times electricity use, right? And from global electricity generation contribute almost 44% of global emissions. So electricity use and its carbon footprint are really important. But our power grid is a very complex system. Each small dot here in the US represent a regional power grid. And after they generate electricity they trade with other regional grid. And for the consumers the electricity we use essentially is a blend of electricity used by all those regional grids after complex frequent trading of electricity. For countries it's similar. So each country trade with other countries electricity especially in Europe, right? So then if we consider those electricity trading and we can get and if we don't do electricity trading we get a wrong emission factor. But unfortunately most of the carbon footprint counting use the wrong emission factors. So if we compare the countries on the left or left hand side if we don't consider emission trade electricity trading those countries their electricity emission factors are much underestimated. For example, Switzerland. It's about four or five times difference. It's a lot. So this has a lot of implications because in for example companies in next in Switzerland, Nestle for example if Nestle want to calculate carbon footprint in Switzerland if we don't consider emission trading Nestle's carbon footprint will be off by all those magnitude, right? So lastly, I'll quickly I want to talk about what is the challenges and the solutions in life cycle analysis. So critical challenge in life cycle analysis essentially is data. We don't need, we don't have a lot of data will traditionally come from outside investigation lab test and all those things are very expensive time consuming, right? So that means leads to missing data in life cycle assessment. So this motivate us to think about what are the more efficient method to help us to get those data? So we turn our eyes to data science or big data commonly known. So for life cycle analysis what we need is to have a big table like this which in this table column represent the producing something for example, producing one gram of paper each row to produce this unit of a paper what materials, what energy we need to use as input and what waste been generated for, right? So if we don't know some numbers which means in this table we have a lot of holes. So for a table it's equivalent to yes, a network like this, right? The squares here represent the columns, a product. The circles represent the rows in a table represent the input or output, right? So filling out this table essentially equivalent to predict whether a two nodes there is a link connecting two nodes and how strong that link is, right? This is called link prediction in IT sector. It has been used a lot actually where it has been used in recommendation of products when you do online shopping for example, if you buy books online and they will recommend you might also like other books. It's a similar network. There are nodes represents consumers there are also nodes represent products. So what they do is to compare you between purchase history and other users purchase history, right? And then identify those similar ones and then see what they bought you haven't and then those are the stuff you are most likely to like. So this is essentially equivalent to what we wanted to hear to predict a link between the product node and a material input or output node. So we have done some work. I will skip those technical details but essentially we get essentially relatively reputable lifecycle inventory database that many people have contributed to and randomly remove one part of the data and the develop link prediction models to estimate the data and then compare our estimation with removed piece. If there are close enough then this model works. So then in future if there are new process coming we can use this model to help predict those data. So we have done some experiments if we remove 1% of data in one column for one product which is about 70 ish numbers. We can recover those numbers pretty well. So the this graph essentially shows if we have more blues, we essentially means our estimation is very close to the two value less than 5% difference. X axis and Y axis are two particular parameters in the model I don't want to bore you with those technical details. So this is 1% data missing is pretty good and 5% data missing is also pretty good but if we missing more than 10% data the model doesn't work very well because the blue areas becomes much. So they prove that our method works but works only when we have less than 5% data missing. So what happened when the more than 5% data missing pretty much progress and we are constantly improve our predictions accuracy right now we can achieve some reasonably good result when there are 10% data missing but it's still not finalized yet. So this is what we think in life cycle analysis the biggest challenge and the potential of solutions data and the user data size help us to predict data. So lastly, I want to quickly summarize life cycle thinking has can play a very important role for covering neutrality. There are three main roles. First to identify key processes that are emission reduction potentials. Second to avoid emissions process to another process lastly to inform consumers to make environmentally or climate conscious decisions. So with that I want to thank the organizers again and thank you for having me and thank you for listening. I realize all the time a little bit about that. Thank you so much Professor Mitsu for very deep thinking in terms of about the carbon neutrality which we have always actually come across with the media, with the international treaties. I think there's a question here from the Q&A and I would definitely encourage our attendance to put your comments or questions in a Q&A so that we can actually relay it to Professor Mitsu and to have a discussion. So the question I've got here is about the frustration. So especially remember that there is a documentation about how Amazon lost the majority of it's a forest and definitely it is one of the big, big criticize for Brazil actually under this kinds of climate change and also what are the governments supposed to do? So this kind of halting defrostation is one of the main themes in the COP26 as Jason Lee has mentioned. So he would like to ask how you think, how important it is to achieve carbon neutrality and in this regard. Ming, your thoughts. Yes, thanks Jason for the question. Defrostation of course is very important. If we don't stop defrostation, that means if we reduce emissions in other sectors, for example, reduced emission from power sector, not enough, then defrostation will just make that effort go away. But I also think many of those actions are all important. Defrostation, stopping defrostation is important. Reduce fossil fuel use in power generation is important and reduce emissions from electrify transportation sector is also important. We need a suite of solutions, not only just one. And I think those solutions can come from the technology, different new technology but also can come from a lot of policy actions. So it's a long answer, but the answer is very important. But almost everything is important for carbon neutrality. Thanks Ming for actually answering that question. And I do have some questions to you and then at which you may have a touch a little bit but actually you have done more work in this field. So the first question is about, when you're talking about this kind of life cycle, it really relates to me when I teach international business, we're talking about value chain, especially the global value chain when we look into the carbon footprint, especially when multinational firms actually involve in those kinds of whole value chain activities. How do you think is it different or maybe quite similar in this kinds of life thinking methodology? I think they're similar, well, essentially the same. Value chain I think is a life cycle thinking and it's just we use different terms coming from different backgrounds. I think value chain coming from the business school I guess and life cycle thinking coming from environmental science but essentially I think they're talking about the same thing and just look at the system from a system perspective not just focus on one particular part. Yeah, I think you're right. We have talked a lot about global value chain and then I think more is more about the firm's practice strategy and their inter-organizational relationship with the different actors in this value chain. Well, from your background, it's more about environmental science. You really go into these kinds of data and to show the footprint how it looks like and you can trace that back. So there are lots of things, we actually build on the same platform but with the different technologies and different methodology. So there are lots of the intersection that we can actually work both in order to understand and how different firms, no matter they are big multinational firms or house more firms, they can actually monitor. I think because for the carbon footprint, most of the difficult part from scholars and also even for the companies because it's quite confusing to look at where it comes from, right? Because like you said, if we just look at one part of the activity, you may ignore actually some other ways and consumption that have already taken place in the other side that more work and more responsibilities need to be taken. Yes, absolutely, yes. While we're still waiting for the questions, there are another question because when we look at this life cycle, value chain, the assumption for us is that those companies, those firms actually engage in this kinds of conventional manufacturing industries so that we know the raw materials need to be sourced so on and so forth. How do you think about the financial service industry? Might be affected by the carbon neutrality and pledge. What's your thought on that? Yes, absolutely. So I didn't look at the, I showed the chart of Fortune 500 companies committed to carbon neutrality or some sort of actions. I didn't look into what our financial companies are doing, but I think financial companies are particularly focused on the, oh, should play a pretty critical role in terms of their investor. Investors, as the investors, if they promote ESG investment, that will help to reduce emissions for a lot of supply chains in a lot of sectors through the companies they're investing. And at the same time, financials companies, they don't produce too much of physical products, but they also have a pretty long supply chain and they need to buy stuff, computers. Their computers, you probably use a lot of electricity. Those are all carbon footprint, those of the financial companies. They also should pay use their carbon footprint there. Yeah, related to what you just mentioned, there are more questions actually floating here. So I think, which relates to this kind of manufacturing and also the marketing aspect, because I make, sorry if I do not pronounce your name properly, and mention that how important a reliable labeling is for achieving carbon neutrality. Because personally, he or she think that in Europe, we do not have this kind of labeling in the products and the services. Does such labeling exist in China? Do you want to share some of your experience in your observations? In China, not much. There's no, I didn't see too many of products have with carbon footprint label. But since, you know, since this year, the government pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, many companies or many industry trade groups have started to talk about, you know, a lot of things to do in response to carbon neutrality policy. One of the things I have been discussing in the news meetings is create, you know, for some for the same industries to create carbon label standard, right? And get certified by third party, et cetera. I see, you know, those are coming, but not yet. Yeah, I agree with me. It's not, there's definitely something under the pipe and, you know, to talk about, you know, how to make, how the mechanism can work out and then how the monitoring system need to be there in place in order to see, you know, how the government would like to regulate the way how the business and how the different parties actually working in this regard. There's another question by Helena Wee and talking about, do you think carbon trading should be included in life cycle thinking? If we're to convince companies to be truly accountable for their carbon outputs? Because I totally understand where this question coming from because there are lots of things talking about greenwashing, SDG washing, because the companies do have those kinds of pressure for corporate social responsibility and a sustainable responsibility. But most of time, we found out and then referred to one of my undergraduate students did a report talking about, you know, those kinds of self-reporting for their green activity actually may not be exactly as reported by the third party. So the question back to you is that do you think carbon trading should be included in life cycle thinking and how to actually offset or how to really make is it truly green activity instead of greenwashing? Well, I think if I understand the question correctly, I think life thinking, we can't include carbon trading in life cycle thinking as long as the question we are looking at is relevant to carbon trading. So life cycle thinking is a way of thinking is a methodology, it can apply to many things. As long as the thing that you're looking at involves carbon trading, of course, why not? But I think another question, similar question will be also very important is whether carbon trading, I think, because as far as I know, most of the carbon trading schemes around the world are focusing on the emissions directly coming from a company that is involved in the carbon trading. But at the same time, we can also think that a company, for example, Microsoft, if Microsoft really reduces carbon footprint, including its own emissions, all those supply chains by 2030, maybe Microsoft can also use that reduction to sell those in the market, carbon trading market, right? So that will probably give more incentives for reducing their, not only their own emissions, but also their supply chain emissions. So I think that's also important to think about. In terms of greenwashing, I think there are a lot of issues there, but I think it's getting better than 10 years ago. 10 years ago, everybody just calculated their carbon footprint on their own and put their website. But now these days, there are international organizations, standards available, then the companies should follow those standards to be transparent. Of course, not everybody is doing that, but I think more and more companies are going towards that direction. And also we need science tools, methods, and databases to help them to quantify their carbon emissions. So that's what scientific community can talk about. Yeah, I think when you just actually touched on the questions proposed by Francisco and Godeno, when we're talking about the science and also the data definitely help us to have a better understanding of how carbon footprint traces and how the companies can do. But Francisco also raised the concern is that, the data science will help to actually calculate, doing the calculation, the technological solutions, such as machine learning can sometimes have a significant carbon footprint themselves. So in this, do you think this is a concern in your research? It's not a concern in my research because the kind of machine learning stuff we do is not that powerful. So I don't think it will generate too much of a carbon footprint. But you're right, those big companies, they have machine learning models running algorithm running all the time in a very large scale. Kind of thing is big data centers, right? Data centers use a lot of energy and of course, if the energy coming from then a lot of emissions, right? So there are actually a lot of research, good research have been published to quantify energy use emissions from data centers, from even running just a simple algorithm, right? So there are a lot of good stuff there in the literature. At the same time, I think the IT sector has also realized this issue. I think Google, for example, has a couple of years ago has already promised that by 2030 or something, and I don't remember the exact time, data centers will be carbon neutral, meaning they're still gonna run their data centers, but they're gonna run their data centers using renewable energy, not using this energy. So I think the practitioners have realized that and the scientific community has also realized that. Yeah, I totally agree with Ming is that it really depends on how consistent and how large those kinds of running the machine really was. I think this also particularly related to one of their emerging industry, the Bitcoin. So there are lots of data mining, which cause lots of carbon footprint and under spotlight and saying that we're quite concerned on how much pollution and consumption of energy on this particular industry has caused. I think back to what we have discussed and what may have provided us, let's come back to the context of China because when China, when President Xi actually talked about carbon neutrality by 2060, actually it raised lots of debates and concerns in international arena about the motivation behind this political, either slogan or the goal. And the more important thing is about feasibility. So Ming, what do you think about it? Do you think that how we're trying to reach carbon neutrality and is it just a shift in policy language rather than practice because this is what lots of the negative side of the comment is actually coming from. So from your expertise and from your past research and your ongoing research. So how realistic do you think that China might be able to achieve the carbon neutrality by 2060? My personal opinion is that it's very feasible but I didn't do any research so it's just educated gas, I think. But I have seen people, many prominent scholars in China and also from other countries have spent time to examine, to study, this issue, all feasible for that 2060 target. And what are the possible pathways? I've seen people published and also presented in various events. There are actually a lot of technology available to reduce emissions in those heavy, emission industry, for example, in the industry, right? So, and also transportation industry. And I think for carbon neutrality, essentially, if you just look from the emission action point of view, essentially it's just power sector and the transportation sector are the purpose to biggest players. And the electric vehicle penetration is very fast in China, probably the fastest in the world. So if all the most of majority of the transportation fleet is electrified and then the power grid is cleaner, becomes cleaner using less coal as fossil energy and more renewable energy. And renewable energy electricity has also been developing rapidly in China as well. So I think, I believe it will be feasible, but again, this is not my case. I can only just do an educated guess. Yeah, thanks so much for sharing your academic guess. I think it's really humble in her statements that you have put it here given that you have done lots of research. I think to add upon that one, because I recently wrote an article for Amcham in Shanghai, we're talking about the debate and whether this is just a China and try to propose a political stance rather than just being more realistic in achieving. So I shared a similar thought with you because I think once China has set up certain kinds of strategic goal, then there will be lots of resources maneuvered and exploited in order to achieve that. And offered past decades that we have seen that China has become a greener in terms of the investment into renewable industry. And also as you have mentioned here that China's electrical vehicles, not just actually the household cars, but also the buses, cultures and taxis, those actually more commercial use actually have already bypassed and the production standard and also reached the production volume and across the world. So those are the positive sign that we can actually see from the historical development. And more importantly, the four teams and four and five year plan also actually seeing the overall plan about how China is going to relocate different regions in terms of the renewable energy development. So there are lots of prospectors that we are confident to some extent that this carbon neutrality by 2060 can be achieved but definitely only the history can tell, right? And then so we can't predict what the future will be but we definitely can keep an eye on it. How do you think about the other countries? Because if we look at COP26, lots of media talking about China actually is the largest count holder for the climate change because of the total consumption. But so it is America, India and other countries. But do you think this kind of life cycle thinking and have been already implemented in those countries or actually there's still a long way to go? There's still a long way to go. As I said, in life cycle thinking, this space mostly to help from this consumption side of approach for carbon neutrality. At the early stage, when we start to think about carbon neutrality, first of all, there will be some low hand fruits. And then that mostly coming from the top down from the government, just as you said, we hear many government countries committed to achieve carbon neutrality by some certain times. So the top down approach I think will come in place first coming from a policy driven by policy. And then later on in the process, for example, in around 20, 30, 40 ish, when those low hand fruits or the policy driven approach has reached to its limit, then a consumption based approach like thinking could start to play a more important role there to complement what the top down approach has. So I think it still have a long way to go, but it will come in later, I think in this process. Yeah, let's hope for the best and then definitely prepare for the worst. And this is always that I tell my students and also the research colleagues, because I think this is really a big issue for everyone across the world. It's not about China to reach carbon neutrality. Actually it down to every single citizen in the globe to think about, especially when former President Obama just actually had his talk at COP26 in Glasgow, he talked about how inland nations should also be part of the picture, while most of our spotlight have been coming to those kinds of more powerful countries. So Ming, I think we're about to conclude today is a very exciting and a very knowledgeable talk given by you, but do you want to actually give for maybe very short brief sentences or messages to the audience and to highlight the topic of what you think about from today's seminar. Okay, all right, thanks. So I think achieving carbon neutrality will affect everyone around the world from working in any every industry. And we need both the top down and bottom up approach in the life cycle thinking will be important from the bottom up perspective. Great, thank you so much Ming for your time. And then an order basket for your research in this field and then definitely we would put you in touch with some of our audience because they definitely want to get more advice from you regarding the literature in those kinds of data science and so on and so forth. And thank you very much for all the attendance and your time and participate in today's seminar and also raise very interesting questions for us to discuss. And I hope that you have very well deserved the rest afterwards. And we are going to see you next week. All right, thank you very much, bye bye.