Abstract
In the context of an accelerating global decarbonization transition, China has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The Chinese government has been implementing various policy tools. We review renewable energy (RE) introduction policies and the emission trading scheme in detail in this chapter. On the one hand, the Chinese government enacted the Renewable Energy Law and promoted the introduction of RE power generation through a series of actions, including the “concession bidding system” and the “feed-in tariff system” for electricity generation from renewable energies. As a result, China has become the world’s largest user of RE. On the other hand, China started a unified national emissions trading scheme for power industries after an eight-year operation of regional pilot markets. As of 2020, it could cover approximately 4500 Mt. of CO2. Based on the stocktaking of the RE introduction policies and the emission trading scheme in China, we summarize the potential future issues. Along with the introduction of a large scale of renewable power capacities, it is necessary to improve the flexibility and stability of the power grid. Moreover, emission trading schemes for other energy-intensive industries, such as cement, petrochemicals, nonferrous metals, and steel, are also in urgent need but still under consideration.
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Notes
- 1.
There are some “local production for local consumption” type of projects in solar power generation as an anti-poverty measure in poor rural areas. In such cases, the resource zone was the same as the general solar power generation, but the purchase price was set higher.
- 2.
LCOE means the average cost per unit of power generation. It is calculated based on the total costs necessary for power generation, such as construction costs, operation and maintenance costs, and fuel costs as well as profits and the estimated power generation during the operation period.
- 3.
Subsidization policies now continues for offshore wind power and distributed power generation, but they are scheduled to phase out by 2030.
- 4.
One ton of coal-equivalent energy use corresponds to approximately 2.6 t-CO2 in terms of CO2 emissions.
- 5.
Peking University Institute of Energy (2021) predicts that CO2 emissions from the power sector will peak in 2025.
- 6.
Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced by electrolyzing water using electricity from RE sources.
- 7.
Currently, there are two main hydrogen production methods—reforming hydrogen from fossil fuels (e.g., steam reforming) and recovering hydrogen generated from coke ovens, etc. Hydrogen processed by such methods is called gray hydrogen as these production processes emit CO2.
- 8.
See Reuters’ article dated September 16, 2021.
Abbreviations
- CCER:
-
Chinese Certified Emission Reduction
- CEA:
-
Carbon Emission Allowance
- CO2:
-
Carbon Dioxide
- COP:
-
Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
- ETS:
-
Emission Trading Scheme
- EU-ETS:
-
European Union Emissions Trading Scheme
- FIT:
-
Feed-in Tariff
- GHG:
-
Greenhouse Gas
- LCOE:
-
Levelized Cost of Electricity
- NDRC:
-
National Development and Reform Commission
- RE:
-
Renewable Energy
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP19K12459372 and JP21H04941.
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Wang, J., Ju, Y., Fujikawa, K. (2023). Climate Policies in China: Renewable Energy Introduction and National Emissions Trading Scheme. In: Fujikawa, K. (eds) Empirical Research on Environmental Policies in China. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5957-0_1
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