Study On The Effectiveness Of Carbon Emissions Trading Policy In China

As the global resource crisis and climate warming become more and more serious,it has seriously threatened the survival and development of mankind.In order to cope with these problems,people put forward a series of sustainable economic development models,such as green economic,low carbon economy and so on.Carbon emissions trading as a means of emission reduction was first proposed in the Kyoto protocol.Then countries have begun to explore the construction of carbon emissions trading market,hope it can help countries achieve carbon emission reduction targets and find a new breakthrough in economic.China didn’t pay much attention to environmental protection in the early stage of economic development,and it has resulted in serious damage to the ecological environment,thus there is an urgent need for ecological environmental governance.At the same time,China has made many commitments in the world to express its determination of carbon emission reduction.In order to effectively achieve carbon emission reduction targets and fulfill the international emission reduction commitments,China has actively applied the market-based approach to the field of carbon emission reduction.Since 2011,China has begun to deploy the carbon emissions trading pilot,and the carbon emissions trading pilot started by step from 2013,and by the end of 2017,China’s national unified carbon emissions trading market was officially started,which indicates that the development of China’s carbon emissions trading market is on the right track.Therefore,study on whether China’s carbon emissions trading policy has favorable impact on China’s economic development and environment protection,which of great significance to the overall development of China’s unified carbon emissions trading market in the future.This paper reveals how the carbon emissions trading policy plays a role in economic growth and environment protection,so as to achieve a win-win situation between economy and environment.Based on the current development of carbon emissions trading pilots,this study summarizes the operation of carbon emissions trading market in China during the pilot period,and investigate the carbon trading market of each pilot area from the market mechanism,transaction situation,performance analysis,effectiveness and shortage,etc.Further,based on the social network analysis,reveals the role of China’s carbon emissions trading pilot area in the spatial correlation network of carbon emissions in China,it will help pilot areas play a leading role in the construction of China’s unified carbon emission trading market,and leading non-pilot areas integrate into national carbon emissions trading market smoothly,so that the effectiveness of carbon emission trading policy can be fully played.Based on the porter hypothesis theory,this paper investigates whether the carbon emissions trading policy stimulates the Potter effect in China and achieves a win-win situation between economy and environment.Finally,this paper puts forward policy recommendations for building national unified carbon emissions trading market in the future,so as to provide references for improving the effectiveness of carbon emissions trading policy.The main conclusions are as follows:First,this paper analyzes the development status of China’s carbon emission trading market.Based on the analysis of the basic characteristics of China’s carbon emissions trading pilot provinces,obtained the relationship between economic development and carbon emission of each area.Beijing belongs to the area of high economic development and medium carbon emissions,Tianjin belongs to the area of medium economic development and high carbon emissions,Shanghai belongs to the area of high economic development and high carbon emissions,Chongqing belongs to the area of low economic development and low carbon emissions,Hubei belongs to the area of low economic development and medium carbon emissions,Guangdong belongs to the area of medium economic development and medium carbon emissions.The difference of economic development level and carbon emission among regions make each carbon emission trading market have their own characteristics.The better development of carbon emission trading market has better economic development,like Shanghai,Beijing and Guangdong,from trading volume,price mechanism,market activity and other aspects,the performance of those carbon emissions trading market are better and market policy are relatively perfect.Compared with other pilot areas,Tianjin has medium economic development level,from the operation of Tianjin carbon trading market,the operating performance of Tianjin carbon trading market is not impressive.Although the performance of the Tianjin pilot has performed well,the performance rate in the past three years has achieved 100%,from the perspective of market turnover and market activity,Tianjin carbon market is only active during the performance period,while at other times,there is less turnover,which indicates that the initiative of Tianjin enterprises to participate in carbon trading is not strong enough,the driving force for participating in carbon trading is only driven by compliance.While Chongqing and Hubei have lower economic development level than other pilots,the two pilots carbon trading markets present a completely different development.Although the two carbon trading pilots were all started in 2014,the operation of carbon market in Hubei is obviously better than that of the Chongqing carbon market,and the performance of the Hubei carbon market can be ranked in all carbon markets.From the aspects of market activity,price mechanism and volume,the performance of Hubei carbon market,while Chongqing carbon market perform bad.In the process of the analysis of the carbon trading market in each pilot,this paper sums up the main problems of carbon markets in the pilot period,such as low legislative,less supervision,weak market liquidity,and so on.In the process of national carbon emissions trading market construction,government should try to overcome or avoid these problems,so as to improve the effectiveness of carbon emissions trading policy.Second,the characteristics of carbon trading pilot areas in China’s carbon emissions spatial correlation network are analyzed.In China’s carbon emission spatial relation network diagram,Beijing,Shanghai and Tianjin are in the center of network,while Guangdong,which has no advantage in geographical position and Chongqing and Hubei,which are relatively backward in economic development,are all on the edge of the network.In the central analysis,the degree centrality,betweenness centrality and closeness centrality of Tianjin,Shanghai and Beijing are all located in the first three,which indicates that the three pilot areas have more carbon emission relationships with other provinces in China,and they have strong control and domination effect on China’s overall carbon emission spatial correlation network,playing the role of “intermediary” and “bridge”,at the same time,they can accelerate the internal connection with other provinces faster.Guangdong is in a central position in central analysis,it plays a certain controlling role in the carbon emissions spatial correlation network.While in the central analysis,Chongqing and Hubei belong to a relatively backward position,which shows that the two pilots are controlled by other provinces in China’s carbon emission spatial correlation network and have less carbon emissions relationship with other provinces.In the block model analysis,each pilot area belongs to different block.Beijing,Tianjin,Shanghai are in the net benefit block,receiving more spillovers from other provinces.Guangdong belongs to the broker block,Chongqing belongs to the bidirectional overflow block,and Hubei belongs to the net overflow block.According to the characteristics of the pilot areas in China’s carbon emissions spatial correlation network,the pilot areas can be fully played to their pilot advantages,providing reference for non-pilot areas in the construction and development of the carbon trading market,helping the non-pilot areas to integrate into the national unified carbon trading market as soon as possible and to make full use of the advantage in the carbon emissions spatial correlation network,further optimize the structure of the carbon emission spatial correlation network,and establish more carbon emissions links among provinces through the carbon trading market,and finally achieve the effectiveness of the carbon emissions trading policy.Third,based on the Potter hypothesis theory,the effectiveness of carbon emissions trading policy is analyzed.In this paper,the study on the effectiveness of carbon emission trading policy is based on the core theory of Potter hypothesis,namely reasonable and strict environment policy promote enterprise technology innovation to achieve a win-win development of economic and environment.This paper investigates the effectiveness of carbon emissions trading policy based on two perspectives.One is from short-term(realistic)perspective,to examine whether the carbon emission policy can achieve Potter effect during the pilot period.Another is from long-term(potential)perspective,assuming that the market operates effectively,measures the optimal production technology of each province under two different environmental policies,and investigates the Porter effect of carbon emission trading policy.The short-term Potter effect of carbon emissions trading policy is investigated by using the difference-in-difference method(DID).At first,the total carbon emissions,the average carbon emissions and the intensity of carbon emissions are analyzed in the pilot areas,non-pilot areas and the nation,and the average carbon emissions and carbon emission intensity levels in the pilot areas are lower than those in the non-pilot areas and the national level.The results of the effectiveness of the carbon emission trading policy by the DID method show that the carbon emission trading policy has a significant advantage in the carbon emission reduction effect,while the effect on the economic dividend has not yet emerged.Therefore,the carbon emission trading policy has not achieved the Potter effect in the short term.The results of the annual test show that it will take some time for the implementation of the policy to show the policy effect.Fourth,the potential Potter effect of carbon emissions trading policy is investigated by building a data envelopment model(DEA)with carbon emissions trading pilot.This paper first analyzes the operation efficiency of the command-and-control policy,because the implementation time of the command-and-control policy is far earlier than the carbon emission trading policy.Therefore,the long-term test of the Potter effect on the carbon emission trading policy is based on the command-and-control policy.By testing the operation efficiency of command-and-control policy,when command-and-control policy is effective,it can also potentially increase economic output.This paper further analyzes the changes of economic output,carbon emissions and carbon emission intensity under two environmental policies.The test of Potter effect is divided into five kinds of circumstances,the pilot phase of the pilot provinces,the pilot phase of the other provinces simulation implementation of emissions trading policy,the pilot stage simulation implementation of the national carbon emissions trading scheme,the command-and-control simulation implementation of the national carbon emissions trading scheme,the non-command-and-control simulation implementation of the national carbon emissions trading scheme,thus more fully to verify the effectiveness of the carbon emissions trading scheme.The test results of the five circumstances show that the carbon emission policy can bring significant economic dividend and environmental bonus,realize the potential Potter effect,and verify that the carbon emission trading policy is superior to the command control policy.Finally,based on the above research results and the current development situation of China’s carbon emissions trading market,this paper puts forward some constructive policy proposals for the construction of China’s national unified carbon emissions trading market in the future,in order to contribute to the development of China’s carbon emissions trading market.