Dance to the Revolution

My Twitter stream is bubbling with excitement about China’s introduction of carbon tax: Quartz, Think Progress, etc. all reported on the Xinhua report, but the larger context is missing and the key questions about the implementation are not answered.   It’s an environmental tax, not a carbon tax The first thing I want to clarify [...]

In September, Shanghai officials announced that it would soon establish municipal subsidies for alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs): vehicle buyers can receive up to 40,000 RMB (US $6,310) in local subsidy and 60,000 RMB ($9,465) in national subsidy, and a free “green” vehicle license. The new municipal subsidies may be in place as soon as October [...]

Mark Fulton, Managing Director and Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research at Deutsche Bank, said yesterday at Society for International Development’s workshop on climate finance: From what I see, the two biggest crises of our age are the climate crisis and the debt crisis, and in order to address both of them, two words: carbon [...]

China Guodian Power Development Co. released its 2011 Internal Control Assessment Report, highlighing the following “high risk areas”.  It seems to me that these points are true sector-wide in China. 1. Growth in power consumption slows down. China’s economy enters a phase of “slow development, deep adjustment”. The speed of economic growth will continue to slow [...]

Never before have we confronted the environmental and energy challenges with such urgency, and never before has U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy in both public and private sector been more crucial. This is the reason why Harvard, MIT and our friends on the West Coast serendipitously decided to hold a conference on this issue on [...]

Environmental tax is not a niche idea – China has been contemplating an environmental tax regime for some years now, see previous coverage: 2007, 2008, 2009. And after our “grizzled” China-watcher has waited for an entire year, Beijing announced its plan to reform the taxation system, of which the introduction of an environmental tax could [...]

Paul Hastings has a nice summary on the environmental aspect of China’s revised Tort Law – a review of the four major articles pertaining to environmental-related liabilities and their implications for foreign investors and corporations. Download the PDF. Along the same note, review of the draft of Law on Water and Soil Conservation has just [...]

Chanting “Lv Zhiyi, Step Down! (Lv: vice secretary of Guangzhou, chief of environmental bureau)”, “Come Out, Mayor!”, “We Demand Dialogue” and “Respect Public Opinion!”, hundreds of citizens in Guangzhou marched to city hall in the morning of Nov. 23 to protest the construction proposal of a trash incineration plant in Pan Yu. With the resonance of Xiamen protest [...]