“Green” effects of hybrid actors through carbon trading: Cases in Beijing

Abstract

The global climate change is resetting the regime complex and mindsets of countries and cities. To provide global public goods of climate governance, multilevel, multidisciplinary, public and private actors interact through “trial-and-error” experiments. Local institutions and mechanisms are likely to be innovated during such interactions. Carbon trading mechanism has been a key unlocking China's low-carbon practices, placing “caps” to pilot cities like Beijing. The first Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project of China started at Anding Landfill Plant in Daxing District, which was the miniature for provincial CDM Centers in China. Since 2011, Beijing was chosen as a pilot city to carry out cap-and-trade mechanism to mitigate carbon emission. In 2013, China Beijing Environment Exchange (CBEEX) was established, enabling more diverse carbon trading projects to be carried out. After the Paris Agreement was reached in 2015, more stringent emission cap was imposed. On the basis of CDM experiences, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games provided various industries to fulfill their “Green” corporate social responsibilities. Challenged by the international questioning about the wind power projects and carbon footprint tagging criteria, domestic voluntary carbon market standard, “Panda Standard” was given birth to; and the independent intellectual property right of electricity-saving refrigerant was invented. Public and private actors became an integral part of China's Innovation-driven and Sustainable Development Strategies. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) derive into hybrid networks with local voluntariness. This paper focuses on the stages reflecting the development of “voluntary hybridity”, by analyzing several cases in representative industries in Beijing.