【有文稿】中国空气的未来

JN: China's leading climate-change official says that in order to meet its targets for non-fossil fuel energy consumption, China will further develop nuclear power. MB: China aims to increase its proportion of non-fossil energy to 20% of its total energy consumption by 2030. Now, what exactly is the significance of this target? Why is 20% so important? Jiang Kejun: Based on the original calculation, if we want to reach 20 percent by 2030, to reach the target, that means the existing annual allowance for renewable energy – for example, solar, wind and hydro – will go further than today. So, for us, so far, it’s quite a huge target, because if you look at the global data, China already dominates one-third of newly-installed capacity per year, in the world MB: China is due to launch a nationwide carbon emissions trading market by 2017. For the benefit of our listeners who are maybe not so familiar with this concept, could you explain a little bit more about how this might work? Jiang Kejun: Just like a “pollute-and-pay” principle, and we want to give carbon CO2 emission a price. That means if somebody emits CO2, they should pay the cost. So the emission trading is based on the economic principle like carbon pricing. Both carbon tax and emissions trading is a way to implement carbon pricing. From 2011, China already launched a pilot programme for emission trading, and seven provinces and cities started emissions trading. So far, they are doing a good job, so this could give a very good basis for a nationwide emissions trading to start in 2017, and also, hopefully, in the coming decades, we want to use carbon pricing, emission trading or carbon tax to play a key role to lead the Chinese economy to go to low carbon. And this will be very high efficiency, because for the last few five-year plans, we did a lot of common control policies. Now it’s getting to be much less efficient, and the government is very tired of that. So, in this way, emissions trading or a carbon tax will be a good choice for China to go to a low carbon economy in the future. Michael: So what sort of an effect emissions trading will have on China's energy consumption, and on its economy in general? Jiang Kejun: OK, this is a good question. So, if we want to go directly to carbon pricing, so far, in the seven Chinese cities, emission trading has not yet played the role of carbon pricing. Hopefully, in the coming nationwide emission trading, we will go step-by-step. For example, the first phase of national emission trading will be from 2017 to 2019, and after 2019, there will be no free allowance, and play the role of carbon pricing. So, this is the future of carbon pricing or emission trading in China.