混合碳减排制度设计研究

碳减排是减缓气候变暖的必由之路,国际社会正在积极推动全球碳减排。我国已向国际社会承诺了碳减排目标,并正在大力开展相关政策的研究和制定。碳税和碳交易是多年来各国激励碳减排最主要的两大机制。这两种机制各有优缺点,它们适当的混合机制可扬长避短,创造出更优越的机制。我们认为,碳税和碳交易机制之间最大的差别在于碳税机制有较低的制度成本(包括建立者一机制所需要的人力物力的投入,以及监管成本等),在操作性上更简便;而在对市场条件和信息的变化上没有碳交易机制的灵活性强,但从另一方面,这种灵活性也恰恰是风险产生的根源之一,它增加了企业在碳排放决策方面的风险和难度;此外,碳税相对于碳交易是间接的碳减排激励机制,碳交易机制的减排效果更直接。基于这些观察,我们设计出一种混合碳减排机制,它是碳税和碳交易机制的有机结合。该混合机制包含两个部分:首先是累进制碳税制度,小企业只缴纳碳税;其次,碳交易制度,建立碳交易市场并对于大企业确定初始碳排放权,对于大企业的超排,将按照高起点的碳税税率加以惩罚。这一混合机制,既考虑了不同企业之间在碳排放权上的公平性,又考虑了机制的效率,并在保障机制效率的条件下尽可能降低企业在碳排放决策上的风险。这些正是这一混合机制的优越性所在。我们还探讨了这一混合机制在我国实施的可行性,并提出了在具体实施过程中所应注意的若干重要事项,并给出了相关的政策建议。本文的探讨可以为政府碳排放政策制定部门提供参考。

A study on the design of a hybrid policy for carbon abatement

An necessary way to mitigate the global warming is carbon reduction, which the international community is now actively promoting.China has committed a target of carbon reduction to the international society, and has devoting a great effort in the research of the related policies.Carbon taxation and carbon trading are the two main mechanisms to advocate carbon abatement, which many countries has been using.Each of these two mechanisms possesses advantages and disadvantages, and an appropriate combination of them can make best use of their advantages and bypass their disadvantages, and hence create a superior mechanism.In our opinion, the main differences between these two mechanisms include that carbon taxation has a lower institution cost (consisting of the related infrastructural investment and the regulation cost, etc), and is easier to operate, but lacks the flexibility in response to the variation of market conditions;on the other hand, however, this flexibility is just the origin of risk, which increases the difficulty for firms in their decision of carbon abatement, and in addition, is an indirect way to incent carbon abatement, comparing with carbon trading, which has a more direct effect in carbon reduction.Based on the above observation, we present a hybrid mechanism of carbon abatement, which is an organized combination of carbon taxation and carbon trading.It consists of two parts: one is the carbon taxation, which has a progressive tax rate and the other is the carbon trading.For the small firms, they pay the carbon tax only.For the large firms, first of all, they need to get the initial carbon emission quotas by some way, and then, trade it in the carbon market in case of necessary.For firms with extra emissions, they will get punishment according to a high carbon tax rate.This hybrid policy considers the equity between different firms in carbon emission rights, and the efficiency of the mechanism as well, and decreases the risk level for firms in the carbon emission decision.This is just what the superiority of the hybrid policy is in.We also analyze the feasibility of this hybrid policy in China, and propose some important issues in the implementation of this hybrid policy in China and present the relevant suggestions.The discussion in this paper can serve as a reference to the government in the decision of carbon policies.