Cover reporter Zhu Ning
Since the official launch of online trading on July 16, 2021, the national carbon market has successfully operated for one year. In the first compliance cycle of the national carbon market, a total of 2,162 key emission units in the power generation industry were included, with a cumulative turnover of about 194 million tons and a cumulative turnover of about 8.49 billion yuan, with a compliance completion rate of 99.5%.
Carbon emission rights trading is a flexible mechanism and effective means to promote green and low-carbon development through market-oriented methods and to control greenhouse gas emissions with minimal social costs. The national carbon market is both an opportunity and a challenge. As the main body of carbon market transactions, emission control companies face two choices: one is passive inclusion, which leads to higher compliance costs; the other is active participation to seize market opportunities.
However, from the overall one-year operation, there are not a few cases of “passive” trading compliance. Most carbon trading occurs in the last month of the compliance period. From the perspective of trading methods, the proportion of bulk agreements in the trading volume reaches 80%. % or more, and the listed transaction volume is less than 20%.
The top-level design has paved the way for carbon trading. After all, it is necessary for the emission control enterprises, as the main body of carbon market trading, to actively “walk”.
In the process of development, emission control companies are facing increasing pressure to reduce carbon emissions, so they are not active in carbon asset management and the construction of carbon markets. Many companies respond to carbon asset management with a negative attitude. It is a wait-and-see attitude during the performance of the contract.
“Will the price of allowances be lowered tomorrow? Will the government introduce other regulatory policies?” Everyone inevitably has a fluke mentality, which will lead to insufficient ability of enterprises to control emissions and make it difficult to achieve the ultimate goal of energy conservation and emission reduction.
However, it should be pointed out that in 2020, China officially proposed the “strategic goal of carbon peaking in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060”, and the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China also listed “carbon emissions will be stable and moderate after peaking”. into the 2035 vision. Therefore, “carbon reduction and emission reduction” is the general trend of economic and social development, and passive luck is “unwanted”.
At the same time, both theoretical and empirical studies have shown that the carbon price mechanism is the most cost-effective emission reduction tool, especially in the short to medium term, and such cost reduction measures can lead to more emission reduction opportunities. Instead of being passively included in the carbon market, emission-control enterprises should change their thinking, start from technological transformation and emission reduction, to rationally plan their own resources to develop “carbon neutral” projects, actively participate in the carbon market, and seize market opportunities.
Behind the challenges lie opportunities. Benchmarking the global mature carbon market, my country’s carbon market has huge development potential and broad prospects. As the main body of the carbon market, emission control enterprises should change their mentality, actively embrace the carbon market, make good use of carbon market transactions, and promote the low-carbon transformation and development of enterprises. High-quality development also contributes to the realization of China’s “dual carbon” goal.Return to Sohu, see more
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