Heavily polluting power plants across China will now have to choose between paying for their emissions or cleaning up their actThe world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, China, has launched the world’s biggest ever mechanism to reduce carbon, in the form of an emissions trading system. “This process should show us more data [on power plants] and more transparency.”Under the trading system, power plants will be issued with allowances to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. China’s power sector is responsible for about 3.3billion tonnes of carbon emissions annually, making this potentially one of the world’s most important mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gases. The move should put an effective national price on carbon emissions across the Chinese power generation sector. Emissions trading as a concept was built into the Kyoto protocol of 1997.

Source: The Guardian December 19, 2017 11:15 UTC