Rachel Cleetus:
Starting in 2013, China began to pilot carbon cap-and-trade programs at the sub-national level. The pilot programs now extend to six cities (Beijing, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Tianjin) and two provinces (Guangdong and Hubei). The experiment has had some encouraging results, and (together with lessons from the EU ETS, California, RGGI, and other carbon trading regimes) provide the real-world experience needed to design a national system to limit emissions in a cost-effective way. China’s INDC announced earlier this year signaled the country’s intention to use carbon pricing to help meet its goal of peaking CO2 emissions by 2030, if not earlier.
China’s work on carbon pricing and cutting pollution has included dialog with the EPA and with the state of California. There are clearly a number of details that still need to be figured out, and opportunities to improve upon the pilot cap-and- trade programs. But the significance of China’s announcement that a national cap-and-trade program will be launched in 2017, along with other measures, cannot be underestimated.
via blog.ucsusa.org
Apologies to everyone who retweeted this after I prematurely posted it!
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