Networking meeting on the current status of China’s planned national ETS

January 2017: For the past three years now, the Chinese government has been gaining experience with seven pilot projects prior to launching its national Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) which is scheduled for autumn this year.

On behalf of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), the AHK Greater Beijing organised a networking meeting on 14 December 2016, to look at the current status and the design of the Chinese ETS. At the meeting, business representatives and environmental experts were invited to discuss both the structure of and the progress made with the Chinese ETS given the challenges faced and the advancements achieved in the seven regional pilot schemes.

Zou Yi, Vice Director of Research & Development at the China Beijing Environment Exchange (CBEEX), opened the meeting with a presentation on the current status of the Beijing pilot project and expectations concerning the upcoming national ETS. Zou’s conclusions were generally positive and he stressed the pleasing performance of the Beijing model in the past few years. For example, its market attractiveness has consistently grown and to such an extent that the volume of certificates traded between 2015 and 2016 had almost doubled. The prerequisite for implementation of the Chinese ETS in 2017 has been met as a result.

The second expert to speak, Chen Zhibin, Senior Analyst at Sino Carbon Innovation & Investment, talked about the structure and the developmental status of China’s national ETS. In his view, there are five specific milestones that must be reached before the ETS can be launched as planned in autumn 2017: publication of national regulations for the Chinese ETS, implementation of the emissions monitoring, reporting and verification process (MRV), of the registration process and of the already approved trading platforms, and finally, the allocation of certificates.

Further Information

An in-depth report on the network meeting is contained in the January issue of the Econet Monitor magazine published by the environmental experts at the AHK Greater China in Beijing. The article is also available for download online.

Note: The publication is available only in German.