BEIJING: The crisis facing the European carbon market will not deter China from plans to establish its own emissions trading platform or its other climate pledges, the senior official responsible for climate change said yesterday.
Xie Zhenhua, Vice-Director of the National Development and Reform Commission in charge of climate policies, said efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions were a “domestic requirement”. They were, he said, designed to address longstanding inefficiency and environmental problems, and did not depend on other nations, or on the state of the economy.
“China has pledged these targets to the international community to deal with climate change and they will not change,” he said at an event in Beijing. “Even if other countries say they will do nothing, we will keep to our strategy. No matter what happens to our economy, we cannot make any change.”
The global financial crisis has saddled Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) with a crushing oversupply of carbon credits and record low prices, but the EU parliament this week rejected proposals to bail the market out.
The ETS allows enterprises to meet their carbon reduction targets by purchasing carbon credits from the market, enabling them to keep emitting greenhouse gases. Many credits have been generated by low-carbon projects in China as part of a United Nations scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism.
China is planning a similar domestic scheme in which carbon-intensive enterprises and industries can meet their own targets by acquiring the emission quotas allocated to other firms.
Xie said China ultimately sought to link its carbon trading platforms with those elsewhere, but was focused now on domestic needs.
“In the future we will establish a link, but in the next few years we first need to establish a carbon market according to Chinese conditions and the conditions of developing countries,” he said.
Reuters
