The European Union Emission Trading Scheme And Its Enlightenments To China

As a market-based environmental economic instrument,emission trading plays an important role in limiting greenhouse gas emission and addressing climate change in the world.This paper overall discusses the world's biggest and most important greenhouse gas emission trading program—The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme(EU-ETS).Through research on the development,core articles,important characteristics and practical experience of EU-ETS,scanning China's climate policies and legislations,this paper finally provides elaborate designs and suggestions for establishing China's own greenhouse gas emission trading program,on based of EU-ETS' experience.The paper is composed of preface,text and conclusion.The preface briefly introduces the cause of climate change and its harm to people and the earth.The text is constituted by the following six chapters--ChapterⅠintroduces international climate change law and greenhouse gas emission trading.It briefly defines"international climate change law"and introduces its principles and system,with emphases on its most important principle—Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and its most significant laws,Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol.This chapter also introduces the theory,development,state and market types of greenhouse gas emission trading.ChapterⅡdiscusses the development,legal framework and some articles of EU-ETS.From the process that European Union accepts market-based instrument and establishes EU-ETS,the author points out that European Union has changed from follower to leader in emission trading.This chapter then discusses the legal framework of EU-ETS in three levels—international laws,international regional laws and domestic laws and finally discusses some important articles of them.ChapterⅢdiscusses the core part of EU-ETS—allowance allocation.The process of allowance allocation is the course of the international commitments allocating from nations to persons.This chapter ends with emphasis on issues of centralization and decentralization,fairness and efficiency. ChapterⅣdiscusses the most important characteristic—an open structure, which includes two open aspects:internal openness referring to the opt-in and opt-out of gases and sectors and external openness referring to the linking between EU-ETS and other emission trading programs.ChapterⅤdiscusses the achievements,shortcoming and doubt of the EU-ETS.It concludes and comments on the experiences and lessons gained from EU-ETS' four-year operation,including accomplishments that EU-ETS achieves,shortcomings that it has and doubts that it faces,and reaches to a conclusion that EU-ETS is basically successful.ChapterⅥdiscusses enlightenments from EU-ETS for China to establish greenhouse gas emission trading scheme.It firstly introduces the state of China's greenhouse gas emission,the international climate change commitments China has and China's practice in greenhouse gas emission trading.Then it discusses the necessities and possibilities of establishing an emission trading scheme.It finally provides elaborate designs and suggestions for establishing China's own trading scheme.The Conclusion furthermore suggests that China's establishment of a scheme based on EU's experience accomplish"three overalls",learn the democracy of EU's policy-making process and build a China-EU link between each other's trading scheme.