context: The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued Notice on recommendation work for green factories 2025 on 9 October 2025. Part of the PRC's green manufacturing architecture that also includes green industrial parks, certified green factories receive government support for meeting benchmarks on energy consumption, emissions intensity, renewable energy use and waste reduction.
Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Energy Conservation Department held an online training session on conducting 2025 green factory recommendation work, on 14 October 2025, chaired by Guo Tinzheng 郭庭政 Green and Low-Carbon Promotion Division director.
This round of reform is unprecedented in scope, aiming to transform green factory initiatives from an honorary title into mandatory performance standards, noted Guo. The session focused on two main areas
- clarifying key directions, principles and notes for recommending green factories and industrial parks
- demonstrating new functions of the Industrial Energy Conservation and Green Development Management Platform
Green factory development must focus on five guiding principles
- keeping the core mission
- this year's reform redirects focus toward improvement guided by measurable benchmarks
- symbolic honours are transformed into hard indicators
- focusing on key industries and avoiding opportunistic applications
- instead of covering all industries, focus now rests on 53 key sectors with high energy consumption/emissions and or those crucial for international competitiveness
- using evaluation tools effectively and avoiding human interference
- enterprises must submit data online and independently, ensuring traceability and fairness through automated scoring
- coordinating new and existing work
- evaluation for new and existing green factories must proceed in parallel
- average scores of existing local factories serve as the baseline for new recommendations
- quality over quantity
- this year has no provincial quota, standards and approval rates will be tracked and used in post-assessment, influencing next year's allocations
The reform includes four major changes
- streamlining and quantifying indicators
- reduced from 92 mostly qualitative criteria to 14 core quantitative indicators
- weighting now favours measurable outcomes, with energy-saving and carbon reduction indicators comprising some 60 percent
- defining key focus sectors
- enterprises must follow industry specific guidelines if included, all others apply general evaluation standards
- simplifying the evaluation process
- requirement for third-party evaluation reports has been abolished
- enterprises can self-report through the online platform and upload supporting documentation
- supporting documentation can be self-prepared or externally compiled
- enhancing platform functionality
- Industrial Energy Conservation and Green Development Management Platform now serves as both portal and management tool
- for enterprises, it allows for benchmarking scores against industry leaders
- for local authorities, it provides real-time data to monitor regional performance
- Industrial Energy Conservation and Green Development Management Platform now serves as both portal and management tool