China expected to unveil carbon trading plan

Chinese officials attending this week's UN climate change conference in New York are expected to outline proposals for its own national emissions trading scheme, as governments step up efforts to restart the stalled Copenhagen negotiations.

According to reports in the Sunday Times, officials from the government-backed China Beijing Environmental Exchange will debut plans for an emissions cap-and-trade scheme similar to that pioneered in Europe, which would effectively cap emissions from some of the country's carbon intensive industries.

The plans promise to flesh out proposals set out last year for a number of regional carbon trading schemes designed to place a price on carbon and establish it as a "scarce resource".

Any China-based cap-and-trade scheme would further cement the carbon market's position as a genuinely global market and could feasibly be linked with similar initiatives in Europe and the US.

The move is the latest in a series of gambits from emerging economies designed to demonstrate their commitment to cutting carbon emissions and, as such, convince richer nations to agree to deeper cuts in emissions.

Last month, the Chinese government signed its first climate change resolution, pledging action to tackle global warming, while India recently unveiled a major national energy efficiency plan and hinted that it would agree to non-binding emissions targets.

The moves are intended to increase pressure on countries such as the US to agree to more ambitious emission reduction goals as part of any treaty. Negotiators from richer nations have consistently argued that they will not sign up to deeper cuts in emissions unless large emitters such as China and India agree to more tangible measures to curb emissions from their fast-expanding economies.

In related news, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to intervene to break the current deadlock that is threatening efforts to agree a successor to the Kyoto Treaty.

Writing in Newsweek today, he became the first world leader to pledge to attend the forthcoming Copenhagen meeting in December and urged his global counterparts to do likewise.

He warned that the slow progress of the negotiations meant that the chance of getting a meaningful deal was in "grave danger", but added that an agreement could be reached if world leaders played a more active role than they have done to date.

"Securing an agreement in Copenhagen will require world leaders to bridge our remaining differences and seize these opportunities," he said. "But I believe it can be done. And if it is necessary to clinch the deal, I will personally go to Copenhagen to achieve it."

World Leaders are to attend crucial meetings in New York and Pittsburgh this week that will attempt to resolve the row between rich and poor nations over emissions targets and clean tech investment plans that have threatened to derail the long-running negotiations.