yes they're pilot schemes. but we wouldn't have f1 cars today without the model t ford, now would we?
China’s developing carbon markets
China is developing at least seven pilot emission trading schemes. China’s first ETS began in June, in the city of Shenzhen (pop. 7 million). The Shenzhen market covers over 800 private and public organisations responsible for 31 million tonnes of carbon pollution, or about 40 per cent of the city’s emissions.
Guangdong province (pop. 100+ million), which includes Shenzhen, is expected to launch a provincial carbon market by the end of the year. This will be the world’s second largest ETS. Covering 600-650 million tonnes of CO2 across the power, iron, steel, cement and petrochemical sectors, it will be nearly twice as large as Australia’s national carbon market and smaller only than the European Union ETS, which covers 2.1 billion tonnes of CO2. (California’s ETS is about half the size, at 165 million tonnes.)
The region of Hubei and the cities of Chongqing and Tianjin are also preparing emission schemes.
Each market has slightly different characteristics, enabling China to test the effectiveness of a range of approaches. In total, the seven pilot carbon markets will cover more than 700 million tonnes of carbon pollution by 2014. China plans to implement a national scheme around 2016 based on the lessons learned from the pilot schemes. It is also considering a carbon tax.
All the pilots are expected to have mandatory limits on pollution for covered sectors. This is similar to Australia’s current legislation, which from 2015 sets a cap on emissions, but differs from the Government’s proposed policy, which has no limit on carbon pollution.
Carbon prices in these markets will evolve through time and are difficult to project with confidence at this point. For example, since trading started in Shenzhen, prices there have ranged from below $A5 to more than $A21 per tonne.
