IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v164y2021i3d10.1007_s10584-021-02961-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A fair trade? Expert perceptions of equity, innovation, and public awareness in China’s future Emissions Trading Scheme

Author

Listed:
  • Jiangyue Joy Ying

    (University of Sussex)

  • Benjamin K. Sovacool

    (University of Sussex
    |Aarhus University
    University of Sussex)

Abstract

How can the Chinese emissions trading scheme (ETS) be redesigned or improved to better address issues of fairness and equity, innovation and learning, and awareness and social acceptance? In order to meet its 2030 carbon emission reduction pledges, the Chinese government has announced plans for a fully implementable national carbon ETS after 2020. This scheme is set to become the world’s most significant carbon trading market and it could cover half of all Chinese CO2 emissions (as much as 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide). In this study, we qualitatively analyze the Chinese ETS through the lens of three interconnected themes—equity, innovation, and awareness—which are disaggregated into six specific dimensions. We then explore these themes and dimensions with a mixed methods and original research design involving a survey of 68 Chinese experts as well as 34 semi-structured research interviews with respondents from local governments, financial institutions, technology service companies, universities, industries, and civil society groups. We find that uneven economic and social growth could exacerbate any initial permits allocation scheme that could be a cornerstone for an ETS. Substantial technological and institutional uncertainties exist that could also hamper development and enforcement. Low or negative awareness among the public and private sector were identified as also being significant barriers for ETS implementation.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiangyue Joy Ying & Benjamin K. Sovacool, 2021. "A fair trade? Expert perceptions of equity, innovation, and public awareness in China’s future Emissions Trading Scheme," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1-23, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:164:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-021-02961-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-02961-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-021-02961-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-021-02961-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Björn Hårsman & John M. Quigley, 2010. "Political and public acceptability of congestion pricing: Ideology and self-interest," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(4), pages 854-874.
    2. Chang, Kai & Zhang, Chao & Chang, Hao, 2016. "Emissions reduction allocation and economic welfare estimation through interregional emissions trading in China: Evidence from efficiency and equity," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1125-1135.
    3. Qiang Wang, 2013. "China has the capacity to lead in carbon trading," Nature, Nature, vol. 493(7432), pages 273-273, January.
    4. Koch, Nicolas & Grosjean, Godefroy & Fuss, Sabine & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2016. "Politics matters: Regulatory events as catalysts for price formation under cap-and-trade," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 121-139.
    5. Da Zhang & Marco Springmann & Valerie J. Karplus, 2016. "Equity and emissions trading in China," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 131-146, January.
    6. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W. & Han, J.Y., 2010. "Total factor carbon emission performance: A Malmquist index analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 194-201, January.
    7. Da Zhang & Marco Springmann & Valerie Karplus, 2016. "Equity and emissions trading in China," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 131-146, January.
    8. Schwirplies, Claudia, 2018. "Citizens' Acceptance of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: A Survey in China, Germany, and the U.S," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 308-322.
    9. Peter Heindl & Sebastian Voigt, 2012. "Supply and demand structure for international offset permits under the Copenhagen Pledges," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 343-360, November.
    10. Alex Y. Lo, 2012. "Carbon emissions trading in China," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(11), pages 765-766, November.
    11. Coraline Goron & Cyril Cassisa, 2017. "Regulatory institutions and market-based climate policy in China," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/247687, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    12. Zhongxiang Zhang, 2015. "Carbon emissions trading in China: the evolution from pilots to a nationwide scheme," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(sup1), pages 104-126, December.
    13. Sovacool, Benjamin K. & Abrahamse, Wokje & Zhang, Long & Ren, Jingzheng, 2019. "Pleasure or profit? Surveying the purchasing intentions of potential electric vehicle adopters in China," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 69-81.
    14. Duan, Hongbo & Mo, Jianlei & Fan, Ying & Wang, Shouyang, 2018. "Achieving China's energy and climate policy targets in 2030 under multiple uncertainties," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 45-60.
    15. Zhao, Xin-gang & Jiang, Gui-wu & Nie, Dan & Chen, Hao, 2016. "How to improve the market efficiency of carbon trading: A perspective of China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1229-1245.
    16. Sun, Chuanwang & Yuan, Xiang & Yao, Xin, 2016. "Social acceptance towards the air pollution in China: Evidence from public's willingness to pay for smog mitigation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 313-324.
    17. Lin, Boqiang & Jia, Zhijie, 2020. "Is emission trading scheme an opportunity for renewable energy in China? A perspective of ETS revenue redistributions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(C).
    18. Cui, Lian-Biao & Fan, Ying & Zhu, Lei & Bi, Qing-Hua, 2014. "How will the emissions trading scheme save cost for achieving China’s 2020 carbon intensity reduction target?," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 1043-1052.
    19. Rissman, Jeffrey & Bataille, Chris & Masanet, Eric & Aden, Nate & Morrow, William R. & Zhou, Nan & Elliott, Neal & Dell, Rebecca & Heeren, Niko & Huckestein, Brigitta & Cresko, Joe & Miller, Sabbie A., 2020. "Technologies and policies to decarbonize global industry: Review and assessment of mitigation drivers through 2070," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    20. Springer, Cecilia & Evans, Sam & Lin, Jiang & Roland-Holst, David, 2019. "Low carbon growth in China: The role of emissions trading in a transitioning economy," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C), pages 1118-1125.
    21. Chen, Zhenling & Yuan, Xiao-Chen & Zhang, Xiaoling & Cao, Yunfei, 2020. "How will the Chinese national carbon emissions trading scheme work? The assessment of regional potential gains," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    22. Snorre Kverndokk, 1995. "Tradeable CO2 Emission Permits: Initial Distribution as a Justice Problem," Transfer: Environmental Values, , vol. 4(2), pages 129-148, May.
    23. Lasse Ringius & Asbjørn Torvanger & Arild Underdal, 2002. "Burden Sharing and Fairness Principles in International Climate Policy," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 1-22, March.
    24. Coraline Goron & Cyril Cassisa, 2017. "Regulatory Institutions and Market-Based Climate Policy in China," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 17(1), pages 99-120, February.
    25. Wu, Libo & Kaneko, Shinji & Matsuoka, Shunji, 2005. "Driving forces behind the stagnancy of China's energy-related CO2 emissions from 1996 to 1999: the relative importance of structural change, intensity change and scale change," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 319-335, February.
    26. Jun Dong & Yu Ma & Hongxing Sun, 2016. "From Pilot to the National Emissions Trading Scheme in China: International Practice and Domestic Experiences," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-17, May.
    27. Lutz, Christian & Meyer, Bernd & Nathani, Carsten & Schleich, Joachim, 2005. "Endogenous technological change and emissions: the case of the German steel industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1143-1154, June.
    28. David Klenert & Linus Mattauch & Emmanuel Combet & Ottmar Edenhofer & Cameron Hepburn & Ryan Rafaty & Nicholas Stern, 2018. "Making carbon pricing work for citizens," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(8), pages 669-677, August.
    29. Duan, Hongbo & Mo, Jianlei & Fan, Ying & Wang, Shouyang, 2018. "Achieving China's energy and climate policy targets in 2030 under multiple uncertainties," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86481, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    30. Zhang, Da & Karplus, Valerie J. & Cassisa, Cyril & Zhang, Xiliang, 2014. "Emissions trading in China: Progress and prospects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 9-16.
    31. Yang, Lin & Li, Fengyu & Zhang, Xian, 2016. "Chinese companies’ awareness and perceptions of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS): Evidence from a national survey in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 254-265.
    32. Odile Blanchard & Patrick Criqui & Michel Trommetter & Laurent Viguier, 2001. "Equity and efficiency in climate change negotiations : a scenario for world emission entitlements by 2030," Post-Print halshs-00476853, HAL.
    33. Liu, Wenling & Wang, Can & Mol, Arthur P.J., 2013. "Rural public acceptance of renewable energy deployment: The case of Shandong in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 1187-1196.
    34. Baochen Yang & Chuanze Liu & Yunpeng Su & Xin Jing, 2017. "The Allocation of Carbon Intensity Reduction Target by 2020 among Industrial Sectors in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-19, January.
    35. Dan SHI & Cheng ZHANG & Bo ZHOU & Lu YANG, 2018. "The True Impacts of and Influencing Factors Relating to Carbon Emissions Rights Trading: A Comprehensive Literature Review," Chinese Journal of Urban and Environmental Studies (CJUES), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(03), pages 1-22, September.
    36. Hu, Yucai & Ren, Shenggang & Wang, Yangjie & Chen, Xiaohong, 2020. "Can carbon emission trading scheme achieve energy conservation and emission reduction? Evidence from the industrial sector in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    37. Yuan, Xueliang & Zuo, Jian & Ma, Chunyuan, 2011. "Social acceptance of solar energy technologies in China--End users' perspective," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1031-1036, March.
    38. Adam Rose & Brandt Stevens & Jae Edmonds & Marshall Wise, 1998. "International Equity and Differentiation in Global Warming Policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 25-51, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shuhong Wang & Xiaojing Yi, 2023. "Can the Financial Industry ‘Anchor’ Carbon Emission Reductions?— The Mediating and Moderating Effects of the Technology Market," Energy & Environment, , vol. 34(3), pages 533-559, May.
    2. Hui Wu & Yaodong Li, 2022. "Does the Emissions Trading System Promote Clean Development? A Re-Examination based on Micro-Enterprise Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-18, December.
    3. Carlson, D'Arcy & Robinson, Stacy-ann & Blair, Catherine & McDonough, Marjorie, 2021. "China's climate ambition: Revisiting its First Nationally Determined Contribution and centering a just transition to clean energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    4. Wu, Liangpeng & Zhu, Qingyuan, 2023. "Has the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) promoted the end-of-pipe emissions reduction? Evidence from China's residents," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Weng, Qingqing & Xu, He, 2018. "A review of China’s carbon trading market," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 613-619.
    2. Baochen Yang & Chuanze Liu & Yunpeng Su & Xin Jing, 2017. "The Allocation of Carbon Intensity Reduction Target by 2020 among Industrial Sectors in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-19, January.
    3. Zhou, P. & Wang, M., 2016. "Carbon dioxide emissions allocation: A review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 47-59.
    4. Li, Mingquan & Gao, Huiwen & Abdulla, Ahmed & Shan, Rui & Gao, Shuo, 2022. "Combined effects of carbon pricing and power market reform on CO2 emissions reduction in China's electricity sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).
    5. Song, Yazhi & Liu, Tiansen & Liang, Dapeng & Li, Yin & Song, Xiaoqiu, 2019. "A Fuzzy Stochastic Model for Carbon Price Prediction Under the Effect of Demand-related Policy in China's Carbon Market," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 253-265.
    6. Lin, Boqiang & Jia, Zhijie, 2019. "Impacts of carbon price level in carbon emission trading market," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(C), pages 157-170.
    7. Wu, Rongxin & Tan, Zhizhou & Lin, Boqiang, 2023. "Does carbon emission trading scheme really improve the CO2 emission efficiency? Evidence from China's iron and steel industry," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    8. Munnings, Clayton & Morgenstern, Richard D. & Wang, Zhongmin & Liu, Xu, 2016. "Assessing the design of three carbon trading pilot programs in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 688-699.
    9. Fei Ye & Lixu Li & Zhiqiang Wang & Yina Li, 2018. "An Asymmetric Nash Bargaining Model for Carbon Emission Quota Allocation among Industries: Evidence from Guangdong Province, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-18, November.
    10. Yu, Fan & Xiao, De & Chang, Meng-Shiuh, 2021. "The impact of carbon emission trading schemes on urban-rural income inequality in China: A multi-period difference-in-differences method," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    11. Chang, Kai & Ge, Fangping & Zhang, Chao & Wang, Weihong, 2018. "The dynamic linkage effect between energy and emissions allowances price for regional emissions trading scheme pilots in China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 415-425.
    12. Chang, Kai & Pei, Ping & Zhang, Chao & Wu, Xin, 2017. "Exploring the price dynamics of CO2 emissions allowances in China's emissions trading scheme pilots," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 213-223.
    13. Wu, Rui & Dai, Hancheng & Geng, Yong & Xie, Yang & Masui, Toshihiko & Tian, Xu, 2016. "Achieving China’s INDC through carbon cap-and-trade: Insights from Shanghai," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 1114-1122.
    14. Lin, Boqiang & Jia, Zhijie, 2018. "Impact of quota decline scheme of emission trading in China: A dynamic recursive CGE model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 190-203.
    15. Chang, Kai & Ye, Zhifang & Wang, Weihong, 2019. "Volatility spillover effect and dynamic correlation between regional emissions allowances and fossil energy markets: New evidence from China’s emissions trading scheme pilots," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 1314-1324.
    16. Chen, Xing & Lin, Boqiang, 2021. "Towards carbon neutrality by implementing carbon emissions trading scheme: Policy evaluation in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    17. Gao, Yuning & Li, Meng & Xue, Jinjun & Liu, Yu, 2020. "Evaluation of effectiveness of China's carbon emissions trading scheme in carbon mitigation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    18. Lin, Boqiang & Jia, Zhijie, 2017. "The impact of Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) and the choice of coverage industry in ETS: A case study in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 1512-1527.
    19. Haoran Zhang & Rongxia Zhang & Guomin Li & Wei Li & Yongrok Choi, 2020. "Has China’s Emission Trading System Achieved the Development of a Low-Carbon Economy in High-Emission Industrial Subsectors?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-20, July.
    20. Zhu, Bangzhu & Jiang, Mingxing & He, Kaijian & Chevallier, Julien & Xie, Rui, 2018. "Allocating CO2 allowances to emitters in China: A multi-objective decision approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 441-451.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:164:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-021-02961-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.