The Chinese government recently issued a document titled “Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of the Renewable Energy Green Electricity Certificate Market” and held a press conference to answer clarifications. Here is a summary of the press conference.
What is the background and significance of the issuance of the Opinions?
In order to build a high-quality Green Electricity Certificate (GEC) market and promote the price of GECs to reasonably reflect the environmental value of green electricity, the government compiled the Opinions to clarify the specific requirements for stabilising the supply of GECs, stimulate the consumer demand for GECs, improve the trading mechanism of GECs, expand the application scenarios of GECs, and promote internationalisation of GECs. The issuance of the Opinions will help stimulate demand for green electricity consumption and boost the GEC market, which is essential for promoting the high-quality development of renewable energy the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development.
What are the measures suggested in the document?
The “Opinions” put forward specific measures pertaining to market supply, consumer demand, trading mechanism, application scenarios, and GEC internationalisation. Measures include:
- Establishing a mechanism for the automatic issuance of green certificates on a monthly basis
- Completing the issuance of green certificates corresponding to the electricity of the previous month in the current month
- Increasing the scale of green power trading
- Improve the verification and write-off mechanism of GECs
- Promoting the optimal allocation of GECs on a larger scale.
- Establishing a GEC consumption mechanism that combines compulsory consumption and voluntary consumption
- Promoting the compulsory consumption of GECs in accordance with the law
- Increasing the proportion of green electricity consumption and using GECs for accounting
- Improving the mechanism for voluntary consumption of GECs
- Expanding the scenarios of voluntary consumption of GECs
- Improving financial and fiscal support policies and other measures
- Improving the price formation mechanism of GECs
- Strengthening the monitoring of GEC prices
- Exploring the establishment of GEC price indexes
- Optimising the GEC trading mechanism
- Promoting the signing of medium and long-term green certificate purchase agreements between the issuer and the user
- Supporting agencies to participate in the issuance and trading of GECs for distributed new energy power generation projects
- Improving the green power trading mechanism
- Promoting the construction of multi-year, annual, monthly and intra-month green power trading mechanisms
- Expand the application scenarios of GECs
- Accelerating the construction of the GEC standard system
- Promoting the effective connection between GEC and carbon emission accounting standards for enterprises in key industries and carbon footprint accounting standards for key products
- Formulating technical standards, rules and labels related to GEC certification and establishing a green electricity consumption certification mechanism in line with China’s national conditions
- Promoting the adoption and application of certification results in relevant fields, and encouraging relevant entities to actively use green electricity consumption labels
- Expanding the scope of industries and enterprises that require green electricity consumption and use GECs for accounting
- Strengthening the application of green certificates in the carbon footprint accounting of key products and product carbon labeling
- Coordinate the preparation of international standards and domestic standards
- Promoting the use of China’s GEC standards for international green power consumption accounting and certification,
- Supporting various institutions and enterprises to carry out exchanges and cooperation on GECs
- Guiding trading partners to recognise China’s GECs
Other pertinent points that were made include:
- Studying methods of incorporating GECs into the dual-control assessment of carbon emissions
- Clarifying the boundaries between GECs and carbon compulsory markets
- Clarifying that indirect electricity emissions from key emitting entities will no longer be included in the management scope of the national carbon emission trading market
- Requiring GECs to be included in carbon emission and carbon footprint accounting; establishing institutional rules for the inclusion of GECs in industry carbon emission accounting; and developing the methodology and national standards for the inclusion of GECs in product carbon footprint accounting
