China Emission Trading Experiment Unlikely to Ease Cities’ Smog
This article is for subscribers only.
China’s plan to set up markets to trade emissions will make it second only to Europe in efforts to put a price on pumping carbon into the atmosphere. For cities choking on the nation’s smog, expect little relief.
Seven pilot carbon-trading programs are scheduled to start this year, with the first opening today in Shenzhen, followed by Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin, Chongqing and Hubei. They are set to regulate 800 million to 1 billion tons of emissions by 2015 in the world’s biggest cap-and-trade program after Europe’s, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.