Guangdong, 2nd biggest carbon market set to start

BEIJING — Guangdong, China’s most populous province with more than 100 million people, is to launch a carbon permits market next month that will be the world’s second biggest after the European Union.
China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by up to 45 per cent by 2020. Shanghai launched a carbon market on Tuesday and Beijing follows today. The scheme in heavily industrialised Guangdong will cap carbon dioxide emissions from 202 companies at 350 million tonnes for 2013, according to a statement on the website of the provincial Development and Reform Commission.

Most permits, including 97 per cent of what emitters get, will be handed out free on December 10, but the local government will also auction 29 million permits for this year from mid-December, it said, without giving a specific date. The Guangzhou-based China Emissions Exchange will then launch a secondary market for permits by the end of December.
Among the firms covered by the scheme, which will dwarf the markets in Australia and California, are state-owned power companies Datang, Huaneng and Shenhua, along with manufacturers and petrochemical firms. — Reuters