碳排放交易体系的政策灵活性:国际经验及启示

Flexibility of Emissions Trading Scheme: Learning from International Experiences

中文关键词:  碳排放交易  履约期  配额的跨期使用  配额抵消  碳市场连接

英文关键词:emissions trading  compliance period  the intertemporal use of allowances  allowance offsets  the linkage of carbon market

中文摘要:

      在《联合国气候变化框架公约》和《京都议定书》的背景下，越来越多的国家开始关注全球气候变暖的问题。考虑到碳排放交易体系比碳税更具有政治可行性，不少国家或地区开始实施碳排放交易体系，以最低的减排成本来达到温室气体减排目标。然而，采用碳排放交易体系，其排放总量是固定的，而减排成本是不确定的，可能会出现由于政策或外部冲击而产生的配额价格异常波动的现象。因此，为确保碳排放交易体系的成本有效性，政策灵活性十分重要。在理想情况下，碳排放市场具有完全的时间灵活性（包括长期的履约期、自由的配额储存与预借）和空间灵活性（即建立全球碳市场），这将对增强市场流动性、降低减排成本、缓解价格波动起到重要的作用。然而，由于政策设计需要考虑更多因素，实际上理想状态很难达到。本文将对国外碳排放交易体系的政策灵活性设计进行较为系统的分析和比较，尤其关注履约期的长短、配额的跨期使用、配额的抵消、区域碳市场连接等方面的具体政策设计，这对我国在7个省市进行碳排放交易试点以及今后建立全国性的碳排放交易体系有较强的借鉴意义。

英文摘要:

      In the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol, more and more countries pay attention to global warming. Considering that emissions trading scheme is more politically feasible than carbon tax, a lot of countries or regions have implemented emissions trading scheme in order to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals at the lowest cost. However, for the emissions trading scheme, the quantity of emissions is fixed while the abatement cost is uncertain. The allowance price may fluctuate dramatically caused by the policies or external shocks. Therefore, policy flexibility is vital to ensure cost efficiency of emissions trading scheme. Under ideal circumstances, carbon market can have full "when flexibility" (including long compliance period, free banking and borrowing) and "where flexibility" (i.e. establishing global carbon market), which plays an important role in increasing market liquidity, reducing abatement costs, alleviating price volatility. In fact, however, it is hard to achieve the ideal state because lots of factors need to be considered in the policy design. This paper analyzed and compared the policy flexibility of emissions trading schemes in different foreign countries, especially focusing on the length of compliance period, the intertemporal use of allowances, allowance offsets, the linkage of carbon market, which have a certain sense of enlightenment for developing emissions trading schemes in seven pilot provinces or cities and establishing national emissions trading scheme in China.