The True Impacts of and Influencing Factors Relating to Carbon Emissions Rights Trading: A Comprehensive Literature Review

Abstract

As an emissions abatement mechanism focusing on property rights theory and market trading methods, carbon emissions rights trading plays an important role in achieving low-carbon economic development, which has already garnered broad worldwide recognition. In the aftermath of the implementation of an initial, seven-province/city, carbon emissions rights trading pilot project, in 2017 China launched a carbon emissions trading rights market on a national basis. The authors of this paper provide a theoretical basis for research into this trading market’s impacts on energy conservation, reduction of emissions, and on economically sustaining, healthy development, from the following four perspectives: the history of the market’s development, a comparison of carbon reduction mechanisms associated with differing carbon tax levies, the effects of carbon emissions rights trading’s implementation, and the influencing factors on such trading. They systematically summarize, sort out, and evaluate the most recent, related carbon emissions rights trading literature, and then based on this analysis offer up insights regarding possible developments and refinements of future carbon emissions rights trading research.