Design of Chemical Enterprise Carbon Reduction Scheme Based on Carbon Handprint Method

Product environmental impact analysis by carbon footprint is a highly recognized research method to quantitatively evaluate carbon emission intensity of industrial products. In addition to the traditional carbon footprint method, researchers have recently proposed a carbon handprint method. This method is driven by the concept of describing the positive impact of products on climate. However, the guidance of this method for industrial enterprises' emission reduction plans is not clear. This paper proposes an enhanced evaluation method of product carbon handprint. We compare footprint and handprint methods by considering the improvement of production process. A plasticizer production enterprise in Zhejiang province is taken as an example. This paper establishes four carbon emission reduction methods of such enterprises and makes a quantitative comparison between footprint and handprint. The comparison results show that the input raw materials account for a high proportion of carbon emissions in both methods. However, in the scope of handprint, plasticizer manufacturers could produce modified plasticizers to generate carbon handprint and reduce emissions for downstream customers. The reduction effect of plasticizer on carbon handprint of polyvinyl chloride customers reached 0.983 tCO2-eq/t, twice as much as the reduction of carbon footprint in the manufacturer. Our work shows that product performance improvement can contribute more carbon handprint, this method is more systematic.