Hot spot perspective.
Core Reading. Green development, especially carbon emission reduction, has become an important direction of economic transformation under the guidance of the "dual carbon" goal, and it is also an inevitable requirement for high-quality development. The adoption of the Interim Regulations on the Administration of Carbon Emission Trading (Draft) will provide a clearer boundary of rights and responsibilities for the legal basis of China's carbon emission trading management, and promote the continuous expansion, standardized and orderly operation and healthy development of the national carbon emission trading market.
Reporter Li Hainan.
At the beginning of the new year of 2024, there will be a new and strong policy guarantee to promote the realization of China's "double carbon" goal - the executive meeting held on January 5 deliberated and passed the "Interim Regulations on the Administration of Carbon Emission Trading (Draft)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations"). This has ushered in a "good start" at the institutional level in the field of green and low-carbon development in China.
After years of exploration and piloting, China's carbon emission trading market has achieved outstanding results, but it also faces some practical challenges, such as the relevant legal concepts need to be further clarified, and the market activity is expected to be further improved.
Experts interviewed by the China Economic Times believe that the adoption of the "Regulations" will provide a clearer boundary of rights and responsibilities for China's carbon emission trading; The improvement of the relevant system of carbon emission allowance will also help prevent potential market risks and promote the continuous expansion, standardized and orderly operation and healthy development of the national carbon emission trading market.
The path of carbon trading system is becoming clearer.
Green development, especially carbon emission reduction, has become an important direction of economic transformation under the guidance of the "dual carbon" goal, and it is also an inevitable requirement for high-quality development. Promoting carbon trading, through carbon emission quotas, and putting on the "cap and constraint" of enterprises in heavily polluting industries is one of the most effective and immediate means to promote carbon emission reduction.
In fact, China has been actively promoting green development around low-carbon development for decades. As early as 2011, China promoted the launch of local pilot projects of "carbon emission trading" in seven provinces and cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Guangdong. Since 2013, pilot carbon markets in various provinces and cities have been launched for trading.
The process of piloting is the process of discovering problems and leading to solutions to them. With the pilot implementation of the carbon market, the scale of transactions has also been expanding, and the resulting problems of defining the rights and responsibilities of entities and how to regulate transactions in the trading process have also emerged. This has also accelerated the development of relevant management measures and legislation for the management of carbon emission trading.
Carbon trading itself can not only bring development benefits to participants, but also release the best signal to the market and achieve comprehensive long-term benefits. * Zhou Hongchun, a researcher at the Development Research Center, said in an interview with a reporter from the China Economic Times that the low-carbon path is an inherent need for China's sustainable development, and low-carbon development is an active adjustment of China's development strategy. He believes that this requires the whole society, the whole industry, and the whole industry to work together to do a good job in the "carbon" article, among which, it is very important to implement the legal norms that are comprehensive, scientific and effective, in line with market expectations and realistic basis as soon as possible.
Rewind the clock to 2019. At that time, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment drafted the "Interim Regulations on the Administration of Carbon Emission Trading (Draft for Comments)" and solicited public opinions for the first time, announcing that China's carbon emission trading legislation had taken a step forward. Subsequently, at the end of 2020, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued and implemented the Administrative Measures for Carbon Emission Trading (Trial), which provided a policy basis for China's carbon trading market. In March 2021, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) drafted the Interim Regulations on the Administration of Carbon Emission Trading (Revised Draft) and once again solicited public comments.
It is through the previous pilot and institutional paving that the national carbon market was launched as expected. On July 16, 2021, the national carbon market was officially launched, and in the three years since, the industry has maintained high expectations for the introduction of the Regulations.
It provides an opportunity to meet the practical challenges of the carbon trading market.
With the continuous improvement of the scale of carbon trading in China, the carbon trading market is still facing many practical challenges: such as the relevant legal concepts are not clear, the market activity is relatively low, especially the inclusion of the "two high" industries is not sufficient, and the trading varieties and trading methods need to be enriched, etc., all of which urgently need to provide solutions through the continuous improvement of systems and mechanisms.
It is understood that the "Regulations" will provide for the allocation of allowances in the carbon emission trading market, the supervision of carbon emission data quality, the settlement of allowances and the operation of trading, and further improve the system of coordinated supervision to better prevent market risks, so as to promote the standardized and orderly operation and healthy development of the national carbon emission trading market, and provide a strong legal guarantee for the realization of China's "double carbon" goal.
The Regulations aim to clearly define the rights and responsibilities in the carbon emission trading process, and to bind the participants in the carbon emission trading market with stricter legal responsibilities. Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Energy Policy Research Institute of Xiamen University, said in an interview with a reporter from the China Economic Times that more importantly, it will further clarify the country's determination to firmly promote green and low-carbon development, clarify information sharing and collaboration with different competent departments and localities, and jointly promote the standardized and orderly development of the carbon market, and then help accelerate the construction of a unified national carbon market.
In Lin Boqiang's view, the legal norms themselves are a sound and perfect implementation of the design and implementation of the carbon market mechanism, "which is also an urgent need to accelerate the current progress." He said that at this stage, the national carbon market is mainly based on allowance trading, supplemented by resource emission reduction, and the market activity is insufficient.
The industry generally expects that in accordance with China's legislative logic and practice, with the adoption of the "Regulations", the future impact on China's carbon emission trading management top-level design of the upper law legislation will also open up imagination.
In terms of the reality of China's carbon market since the pilot, the design of the mechanism related to carbon market trading still needs to be further improved and improved, and laws and regulations, especially the legal requirements for the design of the top-level system, are more important. Lin Boqiang believes that it is imperative to solve the problem of insufficient connection between local and national unified carbon markets as soon as possible, for example, the institutional design of the national carbon market and the local carbon market in terms of coverage, access thresholds and allowance allocation is not completely consistent.
In addition, at present, the trading entities of the national carbon market are all state-owned enterprises, and the coverage of the national carbon market is insufficient. Lin Boqiang said that at present, the national carbon market only includes enterprises in the power industry, and high-carbon emission industries such as cement, iron and steel, and petrochemicals have not yet been included in the national carbon market, which affects the scale of emission reduction.
In Lin Boqiang's view, in the future, the national unified carbon market should include more high-carbon emission industries, enrich trading varieties and trading methods, improve the principle of carbon quota management and distribution, straighten out the carbon cost transmission mechanism, and more importantly, improve the carbon emission accounting system, strengthen the local carbon market and the national market cohesion and coordination.
Regulating carbon trading paves the way for "green development" for the development of carbon finance.
For the field of green and low-carbon development, like the development of many real industries, we are well aware of the importance of financial "living water".
Because of this, the industry has also placed various expectations on the future green transformation of energy and the healthy development of the carbon financial market for the adoption of the "Regulations", and believes that with the adoption of the "Regulations", the relevant carbon finance business will also obtain greater space for orderly development.
Carbon emission trading is a kind of credit trading, and information disclosure is the premise for realizing the value of carbon assets. The promotion of carbon emission trading management legislation will make market supervision more clear and transparent, and help promote the healthy and orderly development of the market. Zhou Hongchun introduced that carbon finance is a financial activity carried out around carbon emission reduction or carbon sink. The essence is to set a ceiling on the original unrestricted greenhouse gas emission rights that do not have commodity attributes, make them a scarce resource, and transform them into standardized, quantifiable, priceable and tradable commodities through quotas and other means.
Carbon finance is an emerging financial business, involving financial institutions such as commercial banks, carbon asset accounting and certification accreditation institutions, and third-party organizations, including providing settlement, fund clearing and custody for carbon market transactions, so as to increase the liquidity of the carbon trading market and form a long-term expectation of carbon credits.
The development of the carbon finance market will derive new financial products similar to the traditional financial market, thereby providing new investment opportunities for asset management institutions. Zhou Hongchun said that once the normalization of carbon financial activities is established through the improvement of laws and systems, it is of great significance to play the role of "living water" of carbon finance and achieve the "double carbon" goal.
Zhou Hongchun believes that this process needs to take the lead in institutional design and innovation, and work hard for a long time to provide strong impetus and support for green development, transformation and upgrading.