Do a good job in carbon trading this "big deal"

It took nearly 10 years from the start of local pilots in 2011 to the establishment of a national carbon trading market in 2021. Compared with the trillion yuan level of the national carbon market predicted by all walks of life, the transaction scale of more than 10 billion yuan in the pilot stage is indeed a piece of cake. But this does not affect the expectations of all walks of life for the "big deal" of carbon trading.

The national carbon market covers eight high-energy-consuming industries such as power generation, petrochemical, chemical, building materials, iron and steel, nonferrous metals, papermaking, and aviation. The first to initiate the first fulfillment cycle was the power generation industry. It is reported that the power generation industry that has been included in the national carbon market includes more than 2,200 enterprises with a total carbon emission of about 4 billion tons. Other industries will gradually be included in the national carbon market.

In accordance with relevant regulations, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment organized the verification of the 2020 annual greenhouse gas emission reports of key emitting units. Among them, the verification data submission of the power generation industry should be completed by June 30, 2021, and the verification data submission of other industries should be completed by December 31, 2021.

Enterprises shortlisted in the national carbon trading market must have two criteria: one is to cover the industry in the national carbon emissions trading market, and the other is to achieve an annual greenhouse gas emission of 26,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Key emitters included in the national carbon trading market will no longer participate in the local carbon emission trading pilot market。

The total amount of carbon emission allowances and allocation schemes are determined by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. The relevant standards should be based on the national greenhouse gas emission control requirements, comprehensively considering economic growth, industrial structure adjustment, energy structure optimization, air pollutant emissions coordination control and other factors.

In the national carbon trading market, carbon emission quotas can be traded by agreement transfer, one-way bidding or other compliant methods. Agreement transfers include listing agreement transactions and block agreement transactions. For listing agreement transactions, the maximum declared quantity of a single transaction should be less than 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, and the bulk agreement transaction should not be less than 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

It can be seen that carbon trading is a "big deal". The industry generated by carbon trading and even the optimization and adjustment of the economic structure is another "big deal".

Data from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment shows that China's carbon emission intensity in 2020 will be 18.8% lower than that of 2015, exceeding the binding targets of the 13th Five-Year Plan, and non-fossil energy will account for 15.9% of energy consumption. These two targets exceed the 2020 target that China has promised the international community.

In 2020, the consumption of clean energy such as natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, wind power, and photovoltaic power generation in China will account for 1 percentage point higher than that of the previous year, and the energy consumption per unit of GDP will decrease by 0.1% compared with the previous year. The expected target for China's unit OF GDP consumption in 2021 is about 3% lower than that of the previous year. In the first quarter of this year, energy consumption in GDP fell by 3.1% year-on-year.

During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP are reduced by 13.5% and 18% respectively. It's a challenge. The national carbon market came into being.

The launch of the national carbon market will give birth to a trillion yuan of large market, and will become an important driver of China's economic transformation and upgrading, and the economic value and social value generated by it are difficult to count. Therefore, doing a good job in the "big deal" of carbon trading is a good thing that "the merit is in the contemporary and the future is in the future".

Author: ■ Yan Yue

Source: China Business Times