At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, French President Francois Hollande paid a state visit to China from November 2 to 3. The two leaders will jointly launch a call for a successful UN climate conference in Paris in December.
Strengthening cooperation on climate change has become an important part of international exchanges. The China-UK Joint Declaration on Building a Global Comprehensive Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century issued by the two sides during President Xi's recent visit to the UK also stressed the importance and necessity of cooperation on climate change: "China and the UK recognize the need to address climate change, one of the greatest threats to humanity, through international cooperation in the context of sustainable development."
In terms of the choice of action to deal with climate change, Britain is very fond of the carbon emissions trading mechanism, which not only tried out the world's first national carbon emissions trading system from 2002 to 2006, but also made full use of the EU carbon emissions tradin G system to promote emission reduction.
Supermarkets, banks and other non-energy-intensive businesses and public institutions account for 10% of the UK's carbon emissions, but have never been included in the carbon reduction plan. To this end, the British government has established a legally mandatory, nationwide cap-and-trade mechanism, the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency System (CRC System), with the goal of reducing 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2020 for large commercial and public institutions. The CRC system was officially launched in 2010 after the promulgation of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency System Directive.
At present, the UK CRC system has completed the first phase (2010/2011 to 2013/2014) and entered the second phase (2014/2015 to 2018/2019). The operation of this system has affected more than 2000 of Britain's largest organizations, including supermarkets, banks, hotel chains, catering institutions and government departments, and has achieved good emission reduction results. Carbon emissions in the 2013/2014 compliance year alone decreased by nearly 2.9 million tons compared with the previous compliance year.
In terms of participants, the CRC system is only aimed at the sectors that directly emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, not the production sectors of fossil energy fuels, and is applicable to enterprises or public institutions with annual electricity consumption exceeding 6 million kWh. At the same time, the "primary member" system is adopted, which regards organizations belonging to a large organization group (such as chain enterprises) as a whole, and the organization designated by the group itself acts as the "primary member" to contact the management organization, report the emission situation and pay the quota on behalf of the whole organization group. Energy use is also based on group totals, which brings dispersed branches into the system and reduces administrative costs such as quota allocation, reporting and verification.
In order to avoid overlap between systems, the CRC system excludes the part of the emission agencies participating in the EU Carbon Emission Trading System and the Climate Change Agreement, and the CRC system only covers carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, including indirect emissions from electricity use and direct emissions from natural gas for heating.
In terms of operational mechanism, the CRC system does not set a ceiling target, but adopts a price mechanism, that is, by setting a reasonable selling price of quotas, participants can pay for their carbon emissions, and then promote participants to minimize costs by using energy-saving technologies, so as to gain an advantage in market competition, and even achieve quota balance and earn profits.
The CRC system uses a fixed price (£ 12 per quota) in the first phase, with quotas sold at the start of each compliance year in quantities decided by the participants. After the sale, participants are free to trade quotas on the secondary market, and the government does not control the price. In the second phase, the cap setting and the auctioning of allowances were abandoned in favour of two fixed-price sales, with participants purchasing on the basis of projections, which could only be used for the current and each subsequent compliance year, without offsetting the emissions of the previous year. In order to incentivize participants to do their best to reasonably predict their emissions and buy appropriate allowances in advance, the price of the second allowance sale will be higher than first one.
The CRC system has established an effective restraint mechanism to ensure the smooth operation of the system.
Monitoring, reporting and verification is one of the main tasks of the carbon emissions trading system. The CRC system does not directly monitor emission sources, but first determines the supply of electricity and gas included in the system, and calculates the corresponding carbon emissions. Participants are therefore required to report their annual use to management at the end of each compliance year, and management calculates their emissions accordingly. Because of the high cost of verification in the operation of the system, the CRC system adopts the self-verification method, requiring participants to put the materials and information prescribed by law into the evidence package, supplemented by spot checks and audits.
The CRC system promotes participants to fulfill their compliance obligations through the establishment of compliance mechanisms. Compliance mechanisms refer to rules such as whether participants have fulfilled their compliance obligations and the penalties they face if they have not. In order to ensure the operation effect, the CRC system has set up a variety of punishment measures, such as exposure "blacklist", restriction of rights, civil fines, criminal penalties and so on. Civil fines are the most important punishment measures, including non-compliance with the results, that is, failure to turn in the same amount of emission quotas as the actual emissions within the prescribed period, and non-compliance with the rules, that is, failure to register in accordance with the prescribed procedures, failure to timely and accurately submit annual reports, and failure to provide information in accordance with the statutory requirements. Civil fines are imposed on a daily and quantitative basis, with strong penalties and strong incentives. The perfect compliance mechanism provides a strong guarantee for the CRC system. The data show that the compliance rates of the four compliance years in the first phase of the CRC system are 96%, 97%, 99% and 97%, respectively.
China has also done a lot of work in the rule design and pilot promotion of the carbon emissions trading system. In view of the deficiencies of the practice of China's carbon emissions trading system, the British CRC system provides a lot of reference.
First of all, special administrative regulations should be formulated. Compared with the UK's "Climate Change Act", "Carbon Reduction Commitments and Energy Efficiency System Directive", and the action guidelines jointly issued by the regulatory authorities, China's carbon emissions trading is based on departmental regulations and local government regulations, with low legal effect, lack of stability and enforcement; the provisions are too simple to ensure the effectiveness of the system. In order to provide a legal basis for carbon emissions trading as soon as possible, it is appropriate for the State Council to promulgate special administrative regulations and local regulations to supplement them.
Second, different rules apply to non-energy-intensive businesses and public institutions. Unlike the EU carbon emissions trading system, which targets energy-intensive enterprises, the CRC system adopts the "primary member" system and calculates "supply" as emissions, which shows the superiority of cost control in the control of non-energy-intensive enterprises and public institutions.
In contrast, in China, the carbon emissions of energy-intensive enterprises such as steel mills and non-energy-intensive enterprises such as hotels are obviously quite different, but the current trial carbon emissions trading rules use the same rules for both, which is unfair and uneconomical. Therefore, in order to build a carbon emissions trading system in China, different rules should be used for different types of enterprises, non-energy-intensive enterprises and public institutions should not be included in the arrangement for the time being, and special system design should be reserved for them, which can draw lessons from the CRC system.
Thirdly, a binding compliance mechanism should be established. In order to ensure the effectiveness, the CRC system has established a highly binding compliance mechanism, such as a quantity-based penalty for excessive emissions, a penalty of 40 pounds per ton of carbon dioxide, more than three times the quota price; non-compliance with the rules also faces a high penalty. However, the punishment of seven pilot provinces and cities in China is not strong, such as Shanghai stipulates a maximum fine of 100000 yuan for exceeding the standard, and Tianjin does not even have a fine, which can not bring pressure to the participants who exceed the standard. In some regions, there are still some problems such as inadequate punishment for non-compliance with the rules, which can not form the binding force of the carbon emissions trading system and can not play its role in promoting emission reduction.
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