The Construction And Improvement Of Chinese Greenhouse Gases Emissions Trading System

Greenhouse gases emissions trading system(or GHG ETS), evolving from pollutants emissions trading system, is a widely recognized and adopted economic policy instrument functioning as GHG emissions reduction and control so as to alleviate the global climate change and therefore minimize the damages of environmental deterioration on human beings. The mechanism of GHG ETS is to internalize the externality of environment capacity resources through defining the legal property rights of GHG emissions, and to utilize both the functions of government and market to achieve the allocation efficiency of such resources.In a view of academic study on and further practice of such system, the dissertation fully demonstrates the theoretic foundation and structure of GHG ETS, the evolution of the international GHG ETS. It also examines the market status, features and trends of the domestic and international GHG emissions trading, illustrates the main driving forces behind the domestic GHG emissions, the countermeasures taken by China to reduce GHG emissions, and finally presents a design plot for establishing and optimizing China's GHG ETS.The first chapter discusses the theoretic sources of GHG ETS from environment economics perspective. This chapter firstly points out that GHG emissions right belongs to environment capacity resources, which are in essence important economic resources. Then this chapter illustrates the spatial features of GHG emissions and therefore advocates the allocation of such economic resource at international as well as regional and national level. This chapter also makes an in-depth analysis on the "market failures" and "government failures" in the allocation of environment resources and makes justifications for the co-action of government regulations and market mechanism for the optimum allocation of GHG emissions rights.The second chapter sets up a theoretic framework for the economics study of GHG ETS by illustrating GHG, GHG emissions rights and GHG ETS. In addition to a brief introduction on the GHG functions, the relationship between artificially-emitted GHG and climate change, the classification of the GHG emitting sources, this chapter explicitly defines such core concepts of this dissertation as GHG emissions rights and GHG ETS according other pollutants ETS and the Annexâ… of the Kyoto Protocol. Then it discusses the profound connotations of GHG emissions rights, and puts forward the main principles that should guide the initial allocation of GHG emissions rights. This chapter finally makes a concrete illustration on the main components of the GHG ETS under the Kyoto Protocol, including the National Communications System, emissions reduction mechanisms, financing mechanism and contract enforcement mechanism.The third chapter observes the environment, political, economic and technical background of GHG ETS. It tracks the formation of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, their main contents with highlight on the evolvement of the COPs of UNFCCC and the three well-know GHG emissions reduction mechanisms. This chapter also makes a brief evaluation on the historic significance and roles of the above two international climate treaties and the trends of the international climate policies since the Kyoto Protocol came into effect. At last, this chapter introduces the current status and developing trends of GHG ETS in individual countries in the aspect of attitudes and policy options of the major developed countries like the U.S. and EU.The fourth chapter makes a profound analysis on the worldwide operation of GHG ETS, in terms of the market scale, transaction types, market characteristics and developing trends, which all together constitute the international market environment for China's GHG ETS.The fifth chapter bereaves the social and economic background for establishing and improving GHG ETS. The first section begins with the introduction on the history, current conditions and future tendency of China's GHG emissions. The second section demonstrates the six driving forces behind the soaring energy consumption and GHG emissions in light of population, economic structure, income, urbanization, energy utilization patterns and energy pricing mechanism. The third section uses the IPCC's SRES models and an emissions prediction models designed by a domestic research authority to analyze and predict the potentials of China's future GHG emissions.The sixth chapter examines the efforts made by China to alleviate GHG emissions and climate change. It states the guidelines, basic principles and general targets of GHG emissions reduction program stipulated in the National Program for Addressing Climate Change of China. It also introduces the corresponding measures and policies that China has adopted, and analyzes their potential influences on China's macro economy.The last chapter intends to design China's GHG ETS, by concentrating on how to integrate domestic institutions with international institutions, how to fully utilize the two resource allocation mechanisms to achieve the optimum allocation of GHG emissions rights so as to ultimately maintain the sustainable development of China's society and economy. This chapter demonstrates comprehensively the preconditions for the establishment of China's GHG ETS and six principles that should be obeyed when China builds GHG ETS. It also probes into the possible issues which China may confront when building GHG ETS according to the lessons drawn from the most successful and influential EU ETS in the world. The last section of this chapter put forwards a detailed design plot on the four main institutional links of China's GHG ETS.