Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
And
The Communist Party of China Central Committee's Proposal on
Formulating the 12th Five-Year Plan on National Economic and Social Devel-
opment,
issued in October 2010, expressly provides that China will “gradually
establish a carbon emissions trading market”. In particular, General Office of the
National Development and Reform Commission issued
The Notice on Carrying
out Carbon Trading Pilot
in October 2011, approved to carry out carbon trading
pilots in seven provinces and cities (Table
7.1
).
7.3
Analysis of the Status of China's Carbon Trading
As the biggest supplier of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in the
world, China's carbon market is mainly based on CDM projects and supplemented
by small-scale voluntary carbon-trading projects. With its rapid development in
recent years, China's carbon market has been regarded as the carbon market with
the highest potential by a great many countries.
7.3.1 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
The Clean Development Mechanism, one of the three flexible mechanisms of cross-
border GHG emissions reduction specified by the
Kyoto Protocol
, refers to project-
based cooperation between developing countries and developed countries, which
provides the funds and technologies. Certified Emission Reductions (CERs)
generated from CDM projects are used by developed countries to meet their
GHG emission reduction obligations.
China is now the biggest supplier of CERs, and its lead is being extended. By
May 2013, it was estimated that Chinese projects registered in United Nations will
annually reduce emissions by about 589 million tCO
2
e, with 310 million tCO
2
e
total issued CERs, 4,904 projects approved by the NDRC, 3,563 projects registered
and 1,227 projects issued by the EB (Tables
7.2
and
7.3
).
From Fig.
7.1
, we can see that CDM projects mainly focus on new and renew-
able energy, energy saving and efficiency, CH
4
recovery, etc. Thereinto, “new and
renewable energy” is the largest category, accounting for 74.8 % of the total
number of projects. “Energy saving and efficiency” is the second largest category,
accounting for 12.4 %; projects in other fields, like fuel switch, N
2
0 decomposition,
MSW incineration, HFC-23 decomposition, afforestation and reforestation, have
smaller numbers and are increasing slowly.
7.3.2 Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER)
Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER) refers to the voluntary market, which forms
with the development of CDM. In the VER market, interested parties such as
companies, governments, NGOs or individuals carry out various forms of voluntary
