Evaluation of effectiveness of China's carbon emissions trading scheme in carbon mitigation

In response to climate change issues, China has set clear targets to reduce emissions. The establishment of a carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) has an important role in China's achievement of these targets. China designed its ETS in 2011 and implemented it in pilot regions in 2013. This study investigated whether the ETS reduces carbon emissions and how it influences carbon leakage. First, the production-based emissions, consumption-based emissions, and carbon leakage of 28 industries in 30 provinces during 2005–2015 were calculated based on provincial environmentally extended input–output tables. Then, the difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences models were used to evaluate the effectiveness of ETS. The following conclusions were derived. (1) ETS contributes to emissions mitigation in pilot regions and industries. (2) ETS has greater effect on the mitigation of production-based emissions than consumption-based emissions. (3) ETS encourages outsourcing of emissions from pilot areas to non-pilot areas, resulting in carbon leakage (or “pollution haven” effect), which aggravates the imbalance of emissions transfers among China's provinces. The success of China's ETS in promoting emissions mitigation can serve as an example for other emerging economies.     

China's emissions trading system and an ETS-carbon tax hybrid

China is introducing a national carbon emission trading system (ETS), with details yet to be finalized. The ETS is expected to cover only the major emitters but it is often argued that a more comprehensive system will achieve the emission goals at lower cost. We first examine an ETS that covers both electricity and cement sectors and consider an ambitious cap starting in 2017 that will meet the official objective to reduce the carbon-GDP intensity by 60–65% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. The two ETS-covered industries are compensated with an output-based subsidy to represent the intention to give free permits to the covered enterprises. We then consider a hybrid system where the non-ETS sectors pay a carbon tax and share in the CO₂ reduction burden. Our simulations indicate that hybrid systems will achieve the same CO₂ goals with lower permit prices and GDP losses. We also show how auctioning of the permits improves the efficiency of the ETS and the hybrid systems. Finally, we find that these CO₂ control policies are progressive in that higher income households bear a bigger burden.     

BP's emissions trading system

Between 1998 and 2001, BP reduced its emissions of greenhouse gases by more than 10%. BP's success in cutting emissions is often equated with its use of an apparently market-based emissions trading program. However no independent study has ever examined the rules and operation of BP's system and the incentives acting on managers to reduce emissions. We use interviews with key managers and with traders in several critical business units to explore the bound of BP's success with emissions trading. No money actually changed hands when permits were traded, and the main effect of the program was to create awareness of money-saving emission controls rather than strong price incentives. We show that the trading system did not operate like a “textbook” cap and trade scheme. Rather, the BP system operated much like a “safety valve” trading system, where managers let the market function until the cost of doing so surpassed what the company was willing to tolerate.     

Impacts of China's emissions trading schemes on deployment of power generation with carbon capture and storage

The establishment of an emissions trading scheme (ETS) in China creates the potential for a “least cost” solution for achieving the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions required for China to meet its Paris Agreement pledges. China has pledged to reduce CO₂ intensity by 60–65% in 2030 relative to 2005 and to stop the increase in absolute CO₂ emissions around 2030. In this series of studies, we enhance the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model to include the latest assessments of the costs of power generation technologies in China to evaluate the impacts of different potential ETS pathways on deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. This paper reports the results from baseline scenarios where power generation prices are assumed to be homogeneous across the country for a given mode of generation. We find that there are different pathways where CCS might play an important role in reducing the emission intensity in China's electricity sector, especially for low carbon intensity targets consistent with the ultimate goals of the Paris Agreement. Uncertainty about the exact technology mix suggests that decision makers should be wary of picking winning technologies, and should instead seek to provide incentives for emission reductions. While it will be challenging to meet the CO₂ intensity target of 550 g/kWh for the electric power sector by 2020, multiple pathways exist for achieving lower targets over a longer timeframe. Our initial analysis shows that carbon prices of 35–40$/tCO₂ make CCS technologies on coal-based generation cost-competitive against other modes of generation and that carbon prices higher than 100$/tCO₂ favor a major expansion of CCS. The next step is to confirm these initial results with more detailed modeling that takes into account granularity across China's energy sector at the provincial level.     

计及碳税的发电权与碳排放权组合交易模型

基于发电权与碳排放权交易机制,文章构建了计及碳税的发电权与碳排放权组合交易双层规划模型。在模型中综合考虑了碳税、发电量、发电权交易价格以及碳交易价格等因素,上层模型为政府制定碳税,下层模型为发电企业确定最优的发电量及交易价格。研究表明:征收碳税不仅对发电企业碳减排起到有效的激励作用,还会对发电权交易价格与碳交易价格产生影响,随着碳税的变化,发电权交易价格与碳交易价格波动较大;征收碳税并结合发电权与碳排放权组合交易,能够实现降低碳排放与增加利润的双赢。这说明在科学合理的政府政策配置下,通过市场机制能够实现低碳环保和经济发展的和谐统一。     

Exploring the price dynamics of CO2 emissions allowances in China's emissions trading scheme pilots

Establishing regional emissions trading scheme pilots in China is a newly transformative and explorative practice. In this paper, we examine the spot price dynamics, asymmetric clustering and regime-switching behaviors of CO₂ emissions allowances in the new China-wide emissions trading scheme (CETS) pilots using AR-GARCH, AR-TARCH and MRS-AR-GARCH models. The regional ETS pilots' design in China vary widely in their coverage thresholds, sector coverage, emissions allocation and caps setting methods, market trading rules and price stabilization provisions. Our empirical results indicate that the spot prices of regional emissions allowances exhibit significant dynamic behaviors, asymmetric leverage effects and regime-switching behaviors in the entire period considered; previous market overreactions in the Beijing, Tianjin and Guangdong pilots have stronger price clustering effects on future conditional variances than do the Shanghai and Hubei pilots. Unexpected market shocks and greater persistence in the Beijing, Tianjin and Guangdong ETS pilots display stronger market volatility and higher market risks, and their asymmetric leverage effects display a decreasing trend in the volatility of the BEA, TJEA and GDEA prices. The BEA and SHEA prices exhibit significant regime-switching behaviors, price jumps and higher volatility; in addition, the changes in the regime-switching phases are often related to the political mechanism design and the fundamental market factors. Those empirical results are beneficial for government decision-makers and market participants to strengthen risk management strategies, support emission-related investment decisions and optimize co-benefits of alternative energy-environmental policies.     

A cooperative game analysis for the allocation of carbon emissions reduction responsibility in China's power industry

The allocation of carbon emissions reduction responsibility (CERR) is a fundamental step to carbon emissions trading (CET) market. In China's power industry, regions with divergent power generation efficiencies and energy structures are connected by a nationwide power grid, causing shifts in carbon emissions. We construct a graph restricted cooperative game model for the allocation of CERRs among regions by proposing a novel characteristic function to describe possible minimal carbon emissions in which power generation is prioritized by efficiency. We employ the Myerson value as the solution of the game to capture the structure of the power grid and the power transmission. Our results indicate the following: (1) Power producing regions with high ratio of clean energy such as “Southwest” and “Sichuan and Chongqing” obtain negative shares of CERR. This provides an incentive for them to contribute to carbon emissions reduction. (2) Large power consumers such as “East” and “Bohai Rim” should take larger CERRs because they transfer carbon emissions to the power producing regions. (3) The role of a region in the power transmission network is an important factor in allocating CERR. This study provides insightful policy implications for the construction of a CET market in China's power industry.     

An evaluation of possible EU air transport emissions trading scheme allocation methods

The European Commission has been requested by member states to study the incorporation of air transport into their existing emissions trading scheme (ETS). Only CO₂ is to be included, at least initially.     

考虑隔墙售电模式和碳排放权交易的分布式光伏项目经济性分析

为实现“3060”碳减排目标,我国鼓励发展清洁能源,近期国家大力推行整县市分布式光伏项目,各大能源集团积极抢占市场争取整县市分布式光伏项目备案及开发建设。按照目前我国风电、光伏项目政策,整县市分布式光伏项目均执行平价上网,使得项目经济效益不佳。依据现行政策,以汕头市某分布式光伏项目为例,利用PVsyst软件模拟项目日发电量,在考虑属地区域分时电价政策的情况下,通过实行与周边大用户协商直售电模式提高售电收入,并综合考虑申请核证自愿减排量通过碳排放权交易增加收益,并与全额上网模式进行项目经济性对比发现,分布式光伏项目如适当施行隔墙售电模式并获取碳排放权收益,可有效提高项目经济性,达到项目投资预期。     

The fundamentals of the future international emissions trading system

The study aims to analyze the sectoral marginal abatements cost curves for a number of EU countries as well as to examine the efficiency aspects and the economic impacts for the major sectors of the ETS under different carbon market configurations in 2010 and 2020. To produce a consistent and realistic assessment, we employ sources such as GHG National Inventories, NAPs and POLES world energy model to constitute the sectoral base year and 2010, 2020 emission levels in different countries and regions. We then use the market analysis tool ASPEN, which enables to derive supply and demand from sectoral MACCs produced with the POLES model, and to evaluate the economic impacts on the carbon market participants. The paper shows that, in compliance with the Kyoto targets, the benefits of an enlarged carbon market are significant, since more than 50% of the abatement in the short term have to be achieved in ETS sectors, which may indeed use CDM or JI credits. A second major conclusion is that in 2020 the new flexibility margins provided by the adjustment of investments in new capacities compensate for the increase in pressure towards stronger emission reductions. This reduces the relative importance of the enlarged carbon market.     

Border adjustment for European emissions trading: Competitiveness and carbon leakage

Unilateral or sub-global policies to combat climate change are potentially sensitive to free-riding and carbon leakage. One way of dealing with carbon leakage and competitiveness is the imposition of border adjustment measures for competing imports, for example in the form of the obligation to importers of goods to purchase and surrender emissions allowances to the authorities when importing. In this paper, we explore some implications of border adjustment measures in the EU ETS, for sectors that might be subject to carbon leakage. We examine the implications of two variants of these measures on the competitiveness of these sectors and on the global environment with the help of a multi-sector, multi-region computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the global economy. Our calculations suggest that border adjustment might reduce the sectoral rate of leakage of the iron and steel industry rather forcefully, but that the reduction would be less for the mineral products sector, including cement. The reduction of the overall or macro rate of leakage would be modest. So, from an environmental point of view border tax adjustments would not be a very effective policy measure, but might mainly be justified by considerations of sectoral competitiveness.     

Baselines for carbon emissions in the Indian and Chinese power sectors: Implications for international carbon trading

The study examines the dynamics of carbon emissions baselines of electricity generation in Indian states and Chinese provinces in the backdrop of ongoing electricity sector reforms in these countries. Two Indian states—Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, and three Chinese provinces–Guangdong, Liaoning and Hubei have been chosen for detailed analysis to bring out regional variations that are not captured in aggregate country studies. The study finds that fuel mix is the main driver behind the trends exhibited by the carbon baselines in these five cases. The cases confirm that opportunities exist in the Indian and Chinese electricity sectors to lower carbon intensity mainly in the substitution of other fuels for coal and, to a lesser extent, adoption of more efficient and advanced coal-fired generation technology. Overall, the findings suggest that the electricity sectors in India and China are becoming friendlier to the global environment. Disaggregated analysis, detailed and careful industry analysis is essential to establishing a power sector carbon emissions baseline as a reference for CDM crediting. However, considering all the difficulties associated with the baseline issue, our case studies demonstrate that there is merit in examining alternate approaches that rely on more aggregated baselines.     

Potential impact of (CET) carbon emissions trading on China’s power sector: A perspective from different allowance allocation options

In Copenhagen climate conference China government promised that China would cut down carbon intensity 40–45% from 2005 by 2020. CET (carbon emissions trading) is an effective tool to reduce emissions. But because CET is not fully implemented in China up to now, how to design it and its potential impact are unknown to us. This paper studies the potential impact of introduction of CET on China’s power sector and discusses the impact of different allocation options of allowances. Agent-based modeling is one appealing new methodology that has the potential to overcome some shortcomings of traditional methods. We establish an agent-based model, CETICEM (CET Introduced China Electricity Market), of introduction of CET to China. In CETICEM, six types of agents and two markets are modeled. We find that: (1) CET internalizes environment cost; increases the average electricity price by 12%; and transfers carbon price volatility to the electricity market, increasing electricity price volatility by 4%. (2) CET influences the relative cost of different power generation technologies through the carbon price, significantly increasing the proportion of environmentally friendly technologies; expensive solar power generation in particular develops significantly, with final proportion increasing by 14%. (3) Emission-based allocation brings about both higher electricity and carbon prices than by output-based allocation which encourages producers to be environmentally friendly. Therefore, output-based allocation would be more conducive to reducing emissions in the Chinese power sector.     

Biomass and China's carbon emissions: A missing piece of carbon decomposition

A number of previous studies on China's carbon emissions have mainly focused on two facts: (1) the continuous growth in emissions up till the middle of the 1990s; (2) the recent stability of emissions from 1996 to 2001. Decomposition analysis has been widely used to explore the driving forces behind these phenomena. However, since 2002, China's carbon emissions have resumed their growth at an even greater rate. This paper investigates China's carbon emissions during 1971–2003, with particular focus on the role of biomass, and the fall and resurgence in emissions since the mid-1990s. We use an extended Kaya identity and the well-established logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI I) method. Carbon emissions are decomposed into effects of various driving forces. We find that (1) a shift from biomass to commercial energy increases carbon emissions by a magnitude comparable to that of the increase in emissions due to population growth, (2) the technological effect and scale effect due to per-capita gross domestic products (GDP) growth are different in the pre-reform period versus the post-reform period, (3) the positive effect of population growth has been decreasing over the entire period, and (4) the fall in emissions in the late 1990s and resurgence in the early 2000s may be overstated due to inaccurate statistics.     

Price floors for emissions trading

Price floors in greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes can guarantee minimum abatement efforts if prices are lower than expected, and they can help manage cost uncertainty, possibly as complements to price ceilings. Provisions for price floors are found in several recent legislative proposals for emissions trading. Implementation however has potential pitfalls. Possible mechanisms are government commitments to buy back permits, a reserve price at auction, or an extra fee or tax on acquittal of emissions permits. Our analysis of these alternatives shows that the fee approach has budgetary advantages and is more compatible with international permit trading than the alternatives. It can also be used to implement more general hybrid approaches to emissions pricing.     

Internalizing carbon costs in electricity markets: Using certificates in a load-based emissions trading scheme

Several western states have considered developing a regulatory approach to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electric power industry, referred to as a load-based (LB) cap-and-trade scheme. A LB approach differs from the traditional source-based (SB) cap-and-trade approach in that the emission reduction obligation is placed upon Load Serving Entities (LSEs), rather than electric generators. The LB approach can potentially reduce the problem of emissions leakage, relative to a SB system. For any of these proposed LB schemes to be effective, they must be compatible with modern, and increasingly competitive, wholesale electricity markets. LSE's are unlikely to know the emissions associated with their power purchases. Therefore, a key challenge for a LB scheme is how to assign emissions to each LSE. This paper discusses the problems with one model for assigning emissions under a LB scheme and proposes an alternative, using unbundled Generation Emission Attribute Certificates. By providing a mechanism to internalize an emissions price signal at the generator dispatch level, the tradable certificate model addresses both these problems and provides incentives identical to a SB scheme.     

Banning banking in EU emissions trading?

Admitting banking in emissions trading systems reduces overall compliance costs by allowing for inter-temporal flexibility: cost savings can be traded over time. However, unless individual EU Member States (MS) decide differently, the transfer of unused allowances from the period of 2005–2007 into the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, i.e. 2008–2012, will be prohibited. In this paper, we first explore the implications of such a ban on banking when initial emission targets are lenient. This analysis is based on a simulation which was recently carried out in Germany with companies and with a student control group. The findings suggest that a EU-wide ban on banking would lead to efficiency losses in addition to those losses which arise from the lack of inter-temporal flexibility. Second, we use simple game-theoretic considerations to argue that, under reasonable assumptions, such a EU-wide ban on banking will be the equilibrium outcome. Thus, to avoid a possible prisoners’ dilemma, MS should have co-ordinated their banking decisions.     

Environmental regulations and emissions trading in China

This paper begins with the international context concerning climate change and how China fits into this context. Concentration is then turning into the emissions control system in China including environmental planning, legislation, policy instruments and measures as well as institutional setting in China’s environmental governance system. Special attentions also being paid to emissions control in China’s power sector. It should be noted that the pollution discharge permit system in China only exists superficially in many places. Insufficient resources are applied to the implementation of the said permit system, which in turn means that the system is applied according to differing standards in different parts of the country. The findings of this paper suggested that emissions trading programmes are usually introduced alongside the existing policies. The power sector usually has numerous other policy objectives and therefore the design and implementation of emissions trading programmes in the sector will have to address concern about the compatibility of existing industry policies.     

Global trading versus linking: Architectures for international emissions trading

International emissions trading is widely seen as an indispensable policy pillar of climate change mitigation [Stern, N., 2007. The Economics of Climate Change. The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press, New York]. This article analyzes five different types of trading architectures, classified into two top–down (UNFCCC driven) and three bottom–up (driven by individual countries or regions) approaches. The two types of approaches are characterized by a trade-off between environmental effectiveness and political feasibility, respectively, whereas their relative cost-effectiveness depends on implementation details. Bottom–up architectures constitute imperfect substitutes for top–down architectures in terms of environmental effectiveness, and thus remain mere fallback options. However, especially the ‘formal linking’ architecture can act as complement in terms of cost-effectiveness.     

Regional difference and drivers in China's carbon emissions embodied in internal trade

To understand the impact of China's internal trade on China's carbon emissions, this article used the multi-regional input-output model to compare embodied carbon emissions based on production principle and consumption principle in the eight major economic regions of China. Besides, the SDA method was used to reveal the drivers of changes in CO₂ emissions. The study uses data from the 2007 and 2012 multi-regional input-output tables. The result shows that domestic demand emissions are the primary source of production-based emissions in China, but the proportion of external demand emissions is increasing rapidly. According to the structural decomposition of the embodied carbon emissions, it can be seen that the carbon emissions caused by the trade in intermediate products have always been a major component of external demand emissions. Further research indicates that the rapid growth in carbon emissions from the production and consumption side of the region is mainly attributed to the expansion of the final demand scale and changes in input structure of the production department. The most critical factor that restrains the increase in carbon emissions on both principles in all regions is the reduction of emission intensity in the production sector. The conclusion of this paper has important implications for how to coordinate inter-provincial trade and regionally balanced development under open economic conditions.