Recently On February 26th, the State Council Information Office held a routine briefing on State Council policies, introducing the relevant information of the Interim Regulations on the Management of Carbon Emission Trading (referred to as the Regulations). Zhao Yingmin, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, introduced at the meeting that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has conducted a special study on expanding the carbon emission trading market, while basically completing relevant technical document drafting work and currently promoting the first expansion of China′s carbon emission trading market.

China′s carbon emissions are mainly concentrated in key industries such as power generation, steel, building materials, non-ferrous metals, petrochemicals, chemicals, papermaking, and aviation, which account for about 75% of China′s carbon dioxide emissions. Integrating high emission industries into the national carbon emission trading market as early as possible can optimize and minimize the carbon reduction cost for the whole society, thereby helping to achieve China′s "dual carbon" goals.

It has been made clear about the work procedures related to determining industry coverage and key emission units in the Regulations. In the future, priority will be given to key industries with high carbon emissions, severe overcapacity, good synergistic effects of pollution reduction and carbon reduction, and a solid foundation of data quality. The expansion work will scientifically and reasonably determine the inclusion time of different industries, and actively promote the coverage of key carbon emission industries in the carbon emission trading market in stages and steps.

At present, the emissions from the power generation industry included in the national carbon trading market account for over 40% of the total in China. The verification work of carbon emission accounting reports for seven other industries besides the power industry has been carried out. Additionally, with relevant technical document drafting work basically completed, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment is launching special research on expansion by evaluating and demonstrating quota allocation methods, accounting report methods, accounting requirements guidelines and expansion implementation paths for key industries.