Publicly listed Chinese companies will soon be subject to heightened environmental disclosure requirements. It is reported that the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) is developing a set of disclosure rules that may go further than their Western analogues, potentially requiring the reporting of SO2 and CO2 emissions and energy efficiency indices (see, e.g. current [...]
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Posted in policy on Dec 18th, 2007
Source: umassmag.com
A friend of China is a friend of mine
Dan Dudek, Chief Economist at Environmental Defense , the chief architect of the U.S.’s sulfur dioxide emissions trading program in the 1990s that has served as the model for carbon emissions trading, and a [...]
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Posted in capital and finance on Dec 12th, 2007
Hong Kong is entering into race to open Asia’s first pollution credits exchange. The International Herald Tribune reports that The board of the Hong Kong stock exchange is considering a proposal today a pollution emissions trading system that could serve as a financial platform for companies from mainland China and other Asian countries entering into what [...]
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Posted in coal, energy efficiency on Dec 8th, 2007
The devastating coal mine explosion earlier this week in China’s Shanxi province that claimed 105 lives has served as a grim reminder of the heavy costs of China’s reliance on coal as an energy source. 70% of China’s electricity is generated from coal. Economic growth has spurred demand for the dirty resource, with [...]
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Posted in policy on Dec 5th, 2007
A draft of China’s first comprehensive energy law has been released for public comment. The law sets out broad principles, leaving detailed regulations to be promulgated by the relevant government agencies at a later date. The draft law still provides telling tidbits of what to expect.
As expected, the law contains provisions on the promotion of [...]
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Posted in climate change, policy on Dec 3rd, 2007
Today’s headlines were predictably dominated by the new two-week round of Climate Change talks in Bali, Indonesia, participated by delegates of some 190 countries. This is the round where it is expected that negotiations for a successor protocol to the Kyoto Protocol, once the latter expires in 2012, are to commence (and hopefully conclude within [...]
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Posted in capital and finance, policy on Dec 2nd, 2007
Greetings all. Welcome to the kickoff of The Green Leap Forward, a blog dedicated to a greener China. As James Kynge observes in his award winning book–China Shakes the World–there exists in China a fundamental mismatch between “its frailty of its physical environment” on the one hand, and “the prodigious strength of its human capital” [...]
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