Introducing the emissions trading system to China's electricity sector: Challenges and opportunities

We examine the challenges and opportunities to introduce emissions trading (ETS) in China's electricity sector, in which the interaction between ETS and electricity market reform plays a major role. China's electricity sector is currently in a slow progress towards a more competitive and market-based system. Both equal share dispatching policy and regulated wholesale and retail pricing policies pose significant challenges for implementation of ETS in China's electricity sector. One of the important points of ETS is to give a price for carbon emissions and establish a cost pass-through mechanism (reminded that the essential of carbon pricing is to put a price on carbon emissions that is equal to discounted value of the external damages). It should be regarded as a part of broader policy package for energy and resources price reform. This will require that any low-carbon power policy should be considered as a part of whole policy package aiming at further liberalizing the electricity sector in China. Three policy options are identified to incorporate ETS with electricity reform under different circumstances. A combination of those three options is also proposed to break the lock and reinforce the positive interaction between ETS and the transition towards a competitive electricity system, in link with current pilot ETS designs. A roadmap to introduce ETS in a stepwise manner is suggested.