How can government green procurement leverage the development of low-carbon industries? The seminar on "Green Procurement Promotes Low-Carbon Transformation of the Building Materials Industry" was held

A seminar on "Green Procurement Promotes Low-Carbon Transformation of the Building Materials Industry" co-sponsored by China Construction Research Technology Co., Ltd. and the Natural Resources Defense Association (NRDC) was recently held in Beijing.

The conference focused on cement and concrete building materials products, and invited industry experts to discuss how to improve government green procurement regulations, strengthen policy coordination, build a green supply chain system, and improve carbon footprint management, providing feasible industry suggestions for further optimizing government green procurement.

passPromote carbon reduction at the production end through green procurement

In July this year, the State Council issued a notice on the "Three-Year Action Plan for" Rectifying Market Order, Building Legal Systems, and Promoting Industrial Development "in the Field of Government Procurement (2024-2026)", proposing to expand the number of pilot cities for government green procurement from 48 to 100. With the further expansion of my country's government green procurement market, procurement policies urgently need to be further improved and optimized, so as to give full play to the government's green procurement potential and promote the carbon reduction process at the production end.

Liu Jingjiang, chief researcher of the Science, Technology and Industrialization Development Center of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said that the current evaluation standards for green building materials have determined to include low-carbon attributes as the fifth key indicator of the evaluation. "In the future, low-carbon attributes will be gradually included during the gradual revision of specific building materials product standards."

Liu Jingjiang emphasized that green building materials cannot be simply understood as low-carbon building materials. The assessment of green building materials covers a wider range of environmental friendliness indicators. Therefore, when government procurement building materials, low-carbon indicators are not the only factors to be considered, but need to be considered comprehensively with other environmental indicators to ensure the realization of sustainable development procurement goals. In addition, he suggested incorporating government procurement into the work assessment of relevant government departments at all levels.

"my country's new green building area accounts for more than 90% of new building area. There are more than 9100 national green building materials certifications, involving 40 industry categories, of which ready-mixed concrete accounts for more than 30%. The green development of concrete has achieved remarkable results." Zhang Jin, deputy secretary-general of the Green and Low-Carbon Building Materials Branch of China Building Materials Federation, said,"Taking the lead in purchasing low-carbon building materials through government public projects can, on the one hand, absorb the green premium in the early stage of research and development of low-carbon materials, and on the other hand, it can also take practical actions to implement low-carbon transformation and play a social role."

Integrate carbon footprint management into the building life cycle management system

Zhou Liwei, director of the Standards and Quality Department of China Building Materials Federation, said that building materials carbon footprint should be combined with building carbon footprint management to improve carbon footprint management throughout the building life cycle. With the improvement of building electrification and the popularization of green electricity, implied carbon will become a key factor in achieving net-zero emissions from buildings. "Therefore, building materials carbon footprint management must be incorporated into the entire life cycle management system of the building. Starting from the overall carbon emission chain from building materials procurement, construction to operations, a unified emission reduction target for the building and construction industry must be formulated, and through top-down management. Model to systematically promote the procurement and use of low-carbon building materials."

"Establishing a carbon footprint disclosure system is an important part of promoting low-carbon development in the concrete industry." Gong Xianzheng, a professor at Beijing University of Technology, said that however, it is not enough to disclose carbon footprint information. What is more important is to encourage companies to proactively carry out "self-inspection" of carbon emissions through disclosure, and on this basis, formulate scientific and feasible emission reduction targets to let the public Understand the company's progress in energy conservation and carbon reduction. The disclosure should not only cover the current emissions situation, but also include future emission reduction plans and specific realization paths. "This will help companies establish a responsible image in the market and win the trust of the public, industry partners and the government through information disclosure."

"In product carbon footprint accounting and carbon footprint-based emission management control system design, we must pay attention to the correlation research between carbon emissions and building materials performance, reasonably set accounting boundaries, and accelerate the shift from qualitative research to quantitative analysis." Li Qinghai, a professor-level senior engineer at China General Building Materials Research Institute Co., Ltd., said that to promote low-carbon building materials, we never forget product performance, and through carbon footprint management, we will coordinate the promotion of high-performance concrete and the utilization of renewable resources. On the one hand, high-performance promotes the improvement of concrete durability and extends the service life of concrete and products; on the other hand, the utilization of renewable resources promotes the reduction of the application of traditional materials and improves the sustainability of carbon reduction strategies.

Incorporate low-carbon indicators into government procurement policies for green building materials

At the meeting, China Construction Research Technology Co., Ltd. released the report "Integrating Low-Carbon Indicators into Government Procurement Green Building Materials Policies". The report surveys the provinces where the first batch of pilot cities for green procurement of my country's government are located and areas where the green building materials industry and green buildings have developed well. The report believes that the formulation of carbon indicators faces three major problems: inconsistent carbon footprint calculation standards, significant differences in concrete carbon footprints in different regions, and difficulties in obtaining carbon emission data.

The report draws on the ideas on the formulation of low-carbon indicators for concrete and cement in the U.S."Clean Procurement" policy, and recommends that the low-carbon indicator of green concrete purchased by my country's government be determined to be ≤186kgCO ˇ/m³, and include it in the "Green Building and Green Building Materials Government Procurement Requirements Standards", used for government procurement projects.

Zhao Xilong, urban project director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), introduced international experience in low-carbon procurement of cement and concrete, including "clean procurement" in the United States and "low-carbon design" in the European Union.

Zhao Xilong said that international experience shows that quantitative low-carbon procurement indicators can directly promote emission reductions at the production end. Our country can refer to the international mature low-carbon indicator system and combine the carbon reduction goals of the country's construction industry to formulate low-carbon procurement standards for concrete products. In addition, countries such as France, the Netherlands and Denmark have proposed implied carbon limits per unit area of buildings, moving implied carbon control forward to the design stage, requiring that building implied carbon emissions be calculated at the design stage, and ensuring that the construction process is strictly purchased according to low-carbon design. This limit indicator provides new ideas for reducing the carbon contained in buildings.

"The Government Procurement Law and the Bidding Law are currently the superior laws that regulate my country's procurement work. These two laws are different in terms of procurement requirements and procedural regulations." Xu Tao, a senior engineer at China Building Standards Design Institute Co., Ltd., said that in accordance with the requirements of establishing a modern government procurement system, international rules such as the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) will be benchmarked to achieve coordination and unification of the rules, and the revision of the Procurement Superior Law is the focus of the construction of procurement laws and regulations, and related work is being actively promoted.

Xu Tao emphasized that promoting green buildings and green building materials in government procurement projects is not only an important means to promote the application of green building materials and improve building quality, but also a practice of exploring new procurement methods in the field of engineering construction. "In the future, we will also study the timely integration of relevant requirements for carbon footprint management into government procurement demand standards to further leverage the leverage role of government procurement in promoting the construction of green industrial chains."

"The government itself has strong purchasing power. Purchasing low-carbon concrete from the application side through government procurement, thereby promoting the production and application of low-carbon cement, is an important way to reduce carbon emissions in the cement industry." Leng Guangliang, deputy chief engineer of China Construction Research Institute and chairman of Jianyan Building Materials Co., Ltd., said that in the next step, it is necessary to improve the low-carbon standard system and low-carbon constraints for ready-mixed concrete, and at the same time strengthen the carbon emission management of products in all links of the industrial chain., thereby promoting the low-carbon development of government-purchased ready-mixed concrete.