The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC),
China's top planning agency, has announced a decision to
require all companies that emitted more than 13,000 tons of CO2 in
2010 to report their future annual emissions of all 6 major
greenhouse gases. The NDRC's statement came in connection
with the Chinese government's plan to build a national carbon
market.
According to the NDRC's statement "[t]he reporting is
to tighten the control over major emitters, provide statistics for
capping greenhouse gas emissions and launch a carbon trading
scheme." Currently, the lack of credible emissions data
is one of the key challenges in building the national carbon
market. Imposing realistic facility-level carbon
caps is difficult if no one has accurate emissions data.
What is clear is that China is the world's biggest emitter
of greenhouse gases, but has pledged to cut emissions per unit of
GDP by 40-45% by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. The
NDRC did not specify
