Reducing environmental pollution, developing and utilizing low-carbon integrated energy system, making economic development maintain a good momentum of sustainable development, has become hot issues of energy research around the world. The Multi-energy Complementary Distributed Energy System (MCDES), that can not only meet the changing energy supply structure and user demand, but also promote the efficient use of resources in the energy system and low-carbon environmental protection, has become the main direction of future energy development. The energy units in MCDES often have large time scale difference and strong uncertainty, which makes the planning and operation of the system more complex than the traditional energy system. Research on the characteristics of system configuration and operation optimization is one of the key measures to ensure the sustainable development and effective utilization of MCDES. Therefore, from three aspects of low-carbon, life cycle and optimization method, the MCDES life cycle low-carbon optimization method is studied in this paper. By reviewing the low-carbon optimization, life cycle optimization and system optimization methods of MCDES, the main problems in the current research status of MCDES life cycle low carbon optimization are pointed out. On this basis, according to low carbon measures and life cycle coordination theory, a multi-objective collaborative optimization method for MCDES life cycle planning and operation is proposed. The research content of this paper provides theoretical guidance for MCDES design optimization.