The International Carbon Emissions Trading System Research

Climate change is currently the focus of attention around the world. With the development of industrialization, the emissions of greenhouse gas have made the air temperature rise sharply, which has a significant impact on the production and living of the human beings. The international community has started discussions and cooperation on the issue of fighting climate change for a long time, hoping to control the emissions of greenhouse gas to mitigate climate change. With the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change" and the "Kyoto Protocol" passed international carbon emissions trade has gradually developed, and has become the main pattern to control the emissions of greenhouse gas for main countries around the world. Nations and regions including the European Union, North America, Australia, Japan, etc., all have their own practice in carbon emissions trade and gradually improve the trading system, wherein there are many experiences we can learn from. On the one hand, China has rapidly developing industries, which incurs the emissions of greenhouse gas increase year by year; on the other hand, China faces the heavy pressure of the international community. Therefore, it is an urgent matter for us to actively explore an effective system to control the emissions of greenhouse gas. This paper discusses the structure of carbon emissions trade system in China on the basis of analysis of current relevant practices around the world.This paper includes four parts apart from the introduction and conclusion.The first part is the overview of the international carbon emissions and the trade. Firstly I elaborate the essential issues of carbon emissions trade, analyzing the definition and legal nature of carbon emissions right, specifying the carbon emissions right in this paper is a narrow sense and it has a legal nature of quasi-property, and clarify that the quota of carbon emissions right is a representation of carbon emissions right in the trade. Secondly, I introduce the process of the international community join together to fight climate change. The impact brought by climate change called attention of people, then in1992more than150countries passed the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change", and later through arduous negotiations the "Kyoto Protocol" was passed in1997(effect in2005). At the end of2012the first commitment period of "Kyoto Protocol" will end. Although Durban Conference in2011has decided to start the second commitment from2013, the international cooperation is full of uncertainty due to the opposition of many developed countries.The second part is the theoretical and systemic foundation of the international carbon emissions trade. I firstly state the theoretical foundation of carbon emissions trade. Currently there is no uniform trading system in the world; regional systems are the main practice. Therefore the carbon emissions trade in this paper is the systems that are existing in the world and trade on the basis of quota is the many object of study. Then I briefly introduce the subject, object of carbon emissions trade and relevant enforcement mechanisms including Independent Transaction Log, National System, Joint Implementation Supervisory Committee and Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board.The third part is the relevant practice of the international carbon emissions trading systems. Firstly I introduce and analyze the overall condition of the international carbon emissions trade, stating that although the trading volume of world trading market increases almost year by year, the emissions reduction is not satisfactory and briefly analyzing the problems including initial allocation, volume control and penalty policy. Then I introduce the EU ETS in detail, including sources of law, implementation phases, allocation mechanism, trading and penalty mechanism and flexible mechanism, and analyze the experiences and lessons China should learn from. At last I briefly introduce the trading system of the USA, Australia and Japan, and also specify the advantage China can use for reference.The fourth part is the discussion on the carbon emissions trading system in China. I firstly introduce our tentative exploration in the aspects of legal, policy and practice, analyze the problems in the current trades including weak legal support, limited efficiency of trading platform and inaccurate orientation of government function. And then on the basis of the aforementioned issues, I point out the suggestions for the building of our carbon emissions trading system. The basic principles include the open, fair, just principle, sustainable development principle, common but differentiated responsibility principle, gradualness principle and government supervision principle. And then I discuss the key systems including implementation phases, volume control, initial allocation, licensing system, authentication system, responsibility system and flexible mechanism.