On January 05, 2021, the MEE released the interim administrative measure for the national ETS of China, which came into force on February 01, 2021.
According to the trial measure, the MEE is responsible for constructing the national ETS including defining the coverage of greenhouse gases (GHG) and scopes, building registration and trading systems, formalizing technical guidelines, and supervising the trading actives jointly with other authorities. It clarifies that enterprises covered by the national ETS will not participate in any regional pilot ETS anymore. At the beginning allowances will mainly be allocated for free, with auctioning being gradually introduced in the future. Allowances are initially the only trading product but other products might be introduced later. Enterprises shall submit a GHG emission report each year before March 31. The CCER used for annual payment shall not exceed 5% of the actual annual emissions, and must be derived from renewable energy, methane utilization and carbon sink voluntary emission reduction projects within China. Finally, the supervision responsibilities within the Ecology and Environment authority system and penalties for non-compliance are also defined.
