The GCL Carbon Chain is a carbon footprint management and transparent supply chain platform jointly developed by GCL Technology, GCL System Integration, and Ant Digital Technologies. It represents an industry-first innovative collaboration model that integrates industrial players, digital platform providers, and certification bodies. Based on Ant Digital Technologies’ blockchain + Taas digital infrastructure, the platform combines traceability, carbon footprint tracking, and organizational carbon management into a unified system. It updates the product carbon footprint model for the entire industrial chain in real time, covering every stage from industrial silicon powder, granular silicon, crystal growth, wafer slicing, solar cell, to PV module assembly. This ensures that low-carbon PV products on the chain are showcased with the highest levels of transparency, openness, and credibility. The platform's models and carbon values have been progressively certified by Germany’s TÜV Rheinland, one of the world’s most authoritative and market-recognized certification bodies. Through this digital platform, real-time carbon emissions and their drivers at every step of the industrial chain can be accurately monitored, providing robust data support for future carbon reduction pathway planning and implementation.

1.Unfair Carbon Values Assigned to Chinese PV Enterprises by Current International Carbon Emission Databases: Prevailing international carbon footprint standards often apply default factors to China that are higher than the actual situation. Taking the French carbon footprint calculation standard as an example,, the electricity factor for China is defined as 1.024 kgCO₂e/kg without accounting for green electricity. This results in inflated carbon footprint calculations for every stage of Chinese PV products. In reality, however, GCL Technology's Leshan base utilized 100% green electricity in 2023, and its Inner Mongolia Xinyuan base increased its green electricity ratio to 40% in 2024. Only through the real-time, certified and competitive carbon emission data calculated by the GCL Carbon Chain can truly reflect the actual carbon emission level of Chinese PV products.

2.Establishing a Carbon Footprint Standard for PV Products with Chinese Characteristics: Currently, only a few companies have disclosed the material consumption, energy consumption and carbon emission data throughout the life cycle of PV modules. Differences in carbon footprint accounting methods, varying definitions of functional units, and significant discrepancies in default factor values among international standards lead to inconsistent carbon footprint results for identical PV products. Against this backdrop, the measured carbon emission data calculated through the GCL Carbon Chain reflects the actual emission levels at each stage, helping to identify emission hotspots and effective decarbonization methods. Analyzing how these factors impact the carbon footprint of China's PV industry and revealing gaps between actual emissions and international requirements will provide a comprehensive understanding of the environmental performance of China's PV sector. This, in turn, will offer robust support for future policy-making and industrial optimization.

1.The GCL Carbon Chain provides a robust data foundation for establishing granular silicon as the lowest-carbon silicon-based material in global factor databases.  At present, internationally recognized carbon factor databases are still dominated by overseas ones, whose factor values fail to reflect the actual carbon emission levels of Chinese PV enterprises. Moreover, in the silicon material segment, only carbon factors for rod silicon are available, with no dedicated carbon factors for granular silicon. Against this backdrop, GCL Carbon Chain is the industry’s first digital carbon footprint matrix covering the entire spectrum from industrial silicon powder to PV modules, laying a foundation for China’s PV industry to develop its own carbon factor database. Meanwhile, the measured and certified carbon emission data of granular silicon generated through GCL Carbon Chain is also expected to facilitate the inclusion of granular silicon carbon factors in international carbon factor databases.

2.Strengthening ESG Practices, Promoting Sustainable Development Capacity Building, and Empowering Upstream and Downstream Industrial Chains for Joint Carbon Reduction As the industry’s first digital matrix integrating carbon management and supply chain management functions, GCL Carbon Chain is a product-centric, end-to-end traceability and carbon management system. It is well positioned to comply with various international green trade regulations and national requirements represented by the EU carbon tariff barriers, including the Circular Economy Action Plan, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), and the EU Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) framework. Meanwhile, through the accounting and supervision of the GCL Carbon Chain management platform, we can not only urge upstream suppliers to achieve targeted carbon reduction, but also empower downstream suppliers with the low-carbon footprint value of granular silicon, thus realizing joint carbon reduction across the entire industrial chain.