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    At present, China is stepping into a new era of digital economy in an all-round way. The process of industrial digitization and digital industrialization is in the ascendant. New technologies, new products and new formats of digital economy are constantly emerging, which is profoundly changing our way of production and life《 The proposal of the CPC Central Committee on formulating the 14th five year plan for national economic and social development and the long-term objectives for 2005 is proposed to accelerate the development of digitization. Develop digital economy, promote digital industrialization and industrial digitization, promote the deep integration of digital economy and real economy, and build a digital industrial cluster with international competitiveness. Overall, digital economy helps to improve the informatization and intelligence level of the whole society, improve the efficiency of resource allocation, reduce carbon emissions and achieve carbon peak and carbon neutralization as soon as possible.

    So, from the perspective of digital economy helping carbon emission reduction, what are the main entry points and focus points? The author believes that the government and enterprises should make efforts at the same time to help carbon peak and carbon neutralization.

    The government should improve the platform construction

    Accelerate the construction of digital cities. Cities and city related buildings account for about 65% of global energy demand. By accelerating the construction of digital city, we can greatly improve the operation efficiency of cities and reduce carbon emissions. By implanting connected devices, networks, cloud, data analysis, machine learning and mobile applications into urban buildings and infrastructure, we can improve the perception and intelligent operation level of the city, so as to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Specifically, it includes significantly reducing urban congestion through intelligent transportation construction; Reduce the invalid operation of energy consuming equipment through intelligent lighting, intelligent air conditioning and other equipment; Through the construction of urban intelligent energy system, such as distributed photovoltaic power station and smart grid, improve the self-sufficiency of urban energy and reduce energy waste.

    Promote the digitization of ecological assets. At present, China is vigorously promoting the construction of ecological product value realization mechanism, and the basis of ecological product value realization is the maintenance and enhancement of ecological service function. Therefore, we should strengthen the quantity and quality monitoring of ecological products and improve their information level. Give each ecological product a digital identity to facilitate its tracking and management. Establish relevant ecological product information platform to track and monitor its area, quantity, quality and ownership, so as to realize real-time accounting and dynamic update of ecological value. For ecological products that can enter the market for trading, such as ecological agricultural products and forest carbon sequestration, establish and improve the trading platform to facilitate the connection between supply and demand and improve the trading efficiency. Through the information construction, the relationship between the value of ecological products and the balance sheet of natural resources, land spatial planning, performance evaluation of ecological civilization construction and other relevant systems can be opened up. Through the digitization of ecological assets, create conditions for the realization of the value of ecological products and stimulate the vitality of green economy.

    Improve the carbon emission information management system. In March 2020, China's carbon emission trading system was basically completed. The Ministry of ecological environment has allocated carbon quotas to more than 2000 power enterprises across the country, and the national carbon trading has been launched. Under the background of carbon peak and carbon neutralization, enterprises involved in carbon emission in the future need to manage their own carbon emission data and establish a carbon emission information system based on enterprises. This system should at least have the following functions: first, monitor the carbon emission of enterprises in real time and form a carbon emission report; Second, it should have the functions of statistical analysis, query, prediction, early warning and decision support; Third, the carbon trading function, enterprises can buy and sell carbon indicators through the information system. At the same time, by analyzing the big data obtained through artificial intelligence, financial institutions can directly outline the carbon footprint of the whole enterprise and estimate its real emission reduction efforts.

    Enterprises actively participate from their own point of view

    For digital economy enterprises, it is urgent to actively participate in carbon peak and carbon neutralization from their own point of view. Specifically, there are the following aspects.

    First, digital enterprises should try their best to reduce their own carbon emissions. Although the green level of most digital industries is high, some are among the high energy consuming, especially big data centers and 5g base stations. For example, the power consumption of data centers in the United States accounted for more than 5% of the total social power consumption, and the power consumption of data centers in China accounted for 2.35% of the total social power consumption in 2018, which will be further improved during the 14th Five Year Plan period. In this regard, the digital industry should reduce its energy consumption and carbon emissions as much as possible through technological innovation. Some domestic and foreign enterprises have begun to explore. For example, Google has developed its own energy-efficient refrigeration system, reducing the energy consumption of the data center to half of the industry average; Alibaba cloud Hangzhou data center immerses the server in a special coolant. The pue (power efficiency) approaches the theoretical limit of 1.0, which can save 70 million kwh of power every year. The saved power can be used for all street lights around the West Lake to light continuously for 8 years.

    Second, digital enterprises should take the lead in realizing their own carbon neutrality. At present, many iron and steel, electric power and other enterprises have put forward a carbon peak and carbon neutralization schedule. Digital enterprises should take active action to take the lead in realizing carbon neutralization. For example, Microsoft announced that it would achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 and eliminate the total amount of carbon emitted by the company since its establishment in 1975 by 2050. In order to achieve this goal, Microsoft not only purchases renewable energy power to meet the daily power demand of the data center, but also proposes to replace diesel generators with low-carbon fuels such as hydrogen as the backup power supply of the data center by 2030. Tencent put forward the goal of carbon neutralization in early 2021, and actively promoted it by focusing on data center efficiency improvement, smart energy, smart transportation and green agriculture. Ant group also made a commitment to carbon neutrality and expects to achieve the goal by 2030.

    Third, digital enterprises participate in the construction of forest carbon sequestration. Increasing forest carbon sequestration through afforestation is an important way for enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities and reduce greenhouse gases. It is not only conducive to establishing a positive image of enterprises, but also has real economic and social benefits. In this regard, the practice of ant forest is representative. Ant forest calculates the carbon emissions reduced by the public's choice of green lifestyle as virtual "green energy", which is used to raise virtual trees in mobile phones. After the virtual tree grows, ant forest and public welfare partners will plant a real tree in the desertification area. In this way, ant forest has greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of the whole society for carbon reduction. According to the accounting report on the gross ecosystem product (GEP) of ant forest afforestation project in 2016-2020 jointly issued by the ecological environment research center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the World Union for conservation of nature (IUCN), more than 223 million real trees were planted in ant forest in 2016-2020, with a total planting area of more than 3.06 million mu and a cumulative carbon emission reduction of more than 12 million tons. I believe that in the future, more enterprises will join the land greening and ecological construction, and digital enterprises should make use of their own advantages to strengthen the construction of carbon sink.

    Fourth, digital enterprises can provide financial support for carbon emission reduction research. At present, carbon capture, carbon storage, carbon utilization and other technologies are not mature, so it is urgent to strengthen research. The profit level of digital industry is generally high, and relevant technical research can be supported by means of project funding and fund establishment. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced the establishment of a US $10 billion earth fund, which is mainly used to fund scientists, climate change activists and non-governmental organizations to carry out research related to climate change. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, announced that he would reward the best carbon capture technology with $100 million. In January 2020, Microsoft announced that it would invest US $1 billion to establish a climate innovation fund.

    Government and enterprises make concerted efforts

    From the perspective of digital technology helping green transformation and promoting the realization of China's carbon peak and carbon neutralization goal, the government and enterprises should also work together in the next stage, focusing on strengthening the following work.

    Carry out research on energy-saving technology of big data center and 5g base station. Big data center and 5g base station are important new infrastructure in China, which is of great significance to the construction of digital economy in China, but the problem of energy consumption is prominent. With the intensification of the construction of big data center and 5g base station, it is expected that the power consumption of China's data center will exceed 250 billion kwh in 2023. Therefore, we should speed up the research and promotion of relevant energy-saving technologies to make the digital economy a real green economy.

    Carry out research on energy Internet related technologies. Due to the insufficient peak shaving capacity of the heating unit system in the heating period, mainly coal power transmission outside the transmission channel, and great difficulties in power demand side management, the problems of "light abandonment" and "wind abandonment" in China have not been effectively solved. Based on digital economy, real-time data of power supply points and power grid operation are collected by sensors, and then the system operation state is predicted by iterative algorithm, which can improve the intelligence level of the whole power system and greatly reduce the shutdown frequency and maintenance cost. Therefore, China should vigorously strengthen the research on energy Internet related technologies in the future to realize the synergy and complementarity of multiple energy sources.

    Carry out the development and research of smart office system. The intelligence of office system is of great significance for energy conservation and emission reduction. For example, realizing intelligent office environment, promoting telecommuting and promoting smart government can reduce ineffective energy consumption and save commuting time and cost. In this regard, it is necessary to build OA system and remote conference system, and carry out research on information security in the process of data transmission.