Resumen de Aligning emissions trading and feed-in tariffs in China
Wenbin Lin, Alun Gu, Xin Wang, Bin Liu
In 2013, China launched its domestic pilot emissions trading scheme (ETS) as a cost-effective strategy to reduce CO2 emissions. Theoretically, the ETS can interact with the feed-in tariffs (FITs) applied to renewable energies (REN). This article presents a simple method to demonstrate how FITs can be adjusted based on the evolution of ETS carbon prices in order to provide a cost-effective climate policy package in China. First, by using provincial data and wind and solar power as examples, it calculates the implicit carbon prices that FITs generate in different Chinese provinces and finds that they are much higher than current carbon prices in the pilot ETS. This shows the necessity of using both instruments to guarantee current level incentives to develop REN for climate change purposes, at least in the short and medium terms. Second, by keeping the annual total carbon price level stable (the sum of the implicit FIT carbon price and the ETS carbon price), and taking into account the cost evolution of REN development, this article demonstrates, for the 2018–2020 period, that FIT should decrease at an annual rate of 3.04–4.63% (for wind) and 7.84–8.87% (for solar) based on different growth rates for progressive national ETS carbon prices.
