BEIJINJG: China’s securities regulator discussed emissions trading futures to boost green development, CGTN reported on Sunday.
It can help the country fulfill its promise to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, said Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province.
China has piloted emissions trading in seven provinces and cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, since 2011 to explore market-based mechanisms to control greenhouse gas emissions. According to the World Bank, there are two types of carbon pricing: emissions trading systems (ETS) and carbon taxes. Sometimes referred to as a cap-and-trade system, ETS caps the total greenhouse gas emissions level. However, it then allows those industries with low emissions to sell their extra allowances to larger emitters.
The Global Carbon Project, an authoritative group of dozens of international scientists who track emissions, calculated that the world will have put 37 billion U.S. tons (34 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide in the air in 2020. That’s down from 40.1 billion U.S. tons (36.4 billion metric tons) in 2019, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Earth System Science Data.
Scientists say this drop is chiefly because people are staying home, traveling less by car and plane, and that emissions are expected to jump back up after the pandemic ends. Ground transportation makes up about one-fifth of emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief man-made heat-trapping gas.
“Of course, lockdown is absolutely not the way to tackle climate change,” said study co-author Corinne LeQuere, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia. The same group of scientists months ago predicted emission drops of 4 percent to 7 percent, depending on the progression of COVID-19. A second coronavirus wave and continued travel reductions pushed the decrease to 7 percent, LeQuere said.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN
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