Market Closed

23 Apr 2024 21:14:31

China set to launch the world’s largest emissions-trading program

Posted: 14 Jul 2021

The carbon market will help the country lower greenhouse-gas emissions and achieve its goal of reaching peak emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality, or net zero emissions, by 2060.

Under the trading program, emitters such as power plants and factories are given a fixed amount of carbon they are allowed to release a year. They can in turn buy or sell those allowances. 

It isn’t known how much an allowance, equivalent to 1 metric ton of carbon emissions, will trade for. Based on regional pilot projects in the previous two years, the average price on the national market is expected to be the equivalent of $6.18 to $7.73, Zhao Yingmin, China’s deputy environment minister, said Wednesday.  The starting price is much lower than the roughly $59 to $70 a metric ton in Europe’s emissions trading program and the $55 to $69 a ton in the U.K.’s system. It would put China’s carbon-emissions prices in line with those of a similar program in the U.S.

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