ABSTRACT
The emerging role of emissions trading programs in China is among a polycentric and fragmented set of measures to reduce carbon emissions (Zhang 2012: 10260). As a remedy to the ineffective and costly command and control measures, emissions trading is expected to provide a whole new set of institutions accommodating multiple stakeholders and market players to reduce emissions efficiently and cost effectively (Tietenberg 2010: 25; Garnaut 2008: 321; Faure and Peeters 2008: 3; Stern 2007: 324). 1 Emissions trading has been an important component of the climate policy in the European Union (Ellerman et al. 2010; Faure and Peeters 2008) and there are several emissions trading programs at national and/or state levels in a number of jurisdictions, such as the Carbon Pricing Mechanism in Australia (Caripis et al. 2011: 583), the New Zealand Emissions Trading Program (Daya-Winterbottom 2008: 73), the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the US (RGGI 2007) and the Western Climate Initiative covering both the US States and Canadian Provinces (WCI 2010).
