ABSTRACT
As a remarkably fast-growing economy in Asia, China has been accelerating its industrialisation and urbanisation processes over the past four decades. At the same time, severe pollution and climate issues caused by enormous energy consumption have raised increasing concerns both regionally and internationally. To control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, China has launched the policy experiment of emission trading schemes (ETSs). In 2011, the Chinese government initiated seven ETS pilots in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hubei, Guangdong and Shenzhen. After several years of development, the Guangdong ETS has become the largest and most active pilot ETS in China as evidenced by trading volume and market value statistics. This chapter adopts the Guangdong ETS as the study subject to explore the local climate governance transformation in China with an emphasis on collaboration between Chinese institutions and international organisations. The finding implies international organisations not only play active roles in the pilot ETS capacity building, but also have indirect impacts on the rule setting of the trial carbon market.
