Abstract:

China is exploring the total volume control system of carbon emissions to speed up its progress of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. Allocation of provincial carbon emission allowances (CEA) is the key to China’s implementation of the total volume goal of carbon emissions. This paper reviews the research on allocating China’s provincial CEA from three aspects: allocation criteria, methods, and results. The results show that taking both principles of fairness and efficiency into account is the consensus of many types of research. However, there are still disputes on the interpretation and measurement of the principle of fairness. The index and optimization methods are most widely used in allocating China’s provincial CEA. The former can take into account the interests of multiple parties, while the latter can improve allocation efficiency. The hybrid method has great potential for development due to its multi-method advantages. The game method is rare due to its’ lack of transparency. There is still a gap between the emission reduction responsibilities of each province in previous allocation results and the actual situation of each province. In addition, previous allocation results only focus on a specific year’s CEA allocation or a specific period’s cumulative CEA allocation. They lack attention to the year-by-year CEA allocation. It is suggested that follow-up research should pay more attention to the construction process of intertemporal dynamic allocation methodology, which takes into account both fairness and efficiency, considers regional heterogeneity and consumer emission responsibility, adopts a multi-method combination, and is compatible with the particularity of individual cases.

Key words: Total volume control of carbon emissions, Provincial carbon emission allowances, Allocation criterion, Allocation method, Allocation result