China has realized that for its own sake and from the international community’s perspective, it cannot afford to continue along the conventional path of encouraging economic growth at the expense of the environment. Accordingly, the country has placed ecological goals at the same level of...

As the first global carbon fund, the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) aims to catalyze the market for project-based greenhouse gas emission reductions while promoting sustainable development and offering a learning-by-doing opportunity to its stakeholders. Since the inception in 2000,...

The Chinese central government has approved the seven pilot carbon trading schemes. These seven pilot regions are deliberately selected to be at varying stages of development and are given considerable leeway to design their own schemes. These pilot trading schemes have features in common, but...

Putting a price on carbon is considered a crucial step for China's endeavor of harnessing the market forces to reduce its energy consumption and carbon emissions. Indeed, aligned with China's grand experiment with low-carbon provinces and low-carbon cities in six provinces and thirty-six cities,...

To achieve the commitments to both carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, China should focus on those policies of significant impact on emissions reduction at the lowest cost. Launching the national carbon market with the power generation sector is a good start point in this direction. Since its...

Climate regulations tend to target energy intensive sectors whose products are widely used in industrial production as intermediate inputs, such as electricity, and the carbon abatement may be partially offset by intermediate input-led leakage. This paper aims to examine the impact of...

Globally as well as in China, cities have contributed to most of the economic output and have accordingly given rise to most CO2 emissions. In particular, given unprecedented urbanization, cities will play an even greater role in shaping energy demand and CO2 emissions. Therefore, cities are the...

China had been singled out by Western politicians and media for dragging its feet on international climate negotiations at Copenhagen, the accusations previously always targeted on the U.S. To put such a criticism into perspective, this paper provides some reflections on China's stance and...

As an important step towards building a "harmonious society" through "scientific development", China has incorporated for the first time in its five-year economic plan an energy input indicator as a constraint. While it achieved a quadrupling of its GDP while cutting its energy intensity by...

In what format and under what timeframe China would take on climate commitments is of significant relevance to China because it is facing great pressure both inside and outside international climate negotiations to exhibit greater ambition and is being confronted with the threats of trade...