China Climate Policy Inventory.docx

We developed a comprehensive policy inventory of China's current and forthcoming climate change policies. We classified climate policies as explicit or implicit. Explicit policies are those that would not be implemented for any other reason other than to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), such as a cap-and-trade program for CO₂ emissions or a regulatory performance standard for CO₂ emissions. Implicit policies are those that were implemented for multiple reasons not exclusive to addressing climate change, but that have the effect of reducing GHG emissions (e.g. China’s feed-in tariffs for renewable energy or afforestation policies). We assembled the inventory mainly from primary sources, namely government documents issued by each relevant government ministry in China. Secondary sources, such as the International Energy Agency's Policies & Measures database, were also used. The policy inventory yielded more than 100 individual climate policies at the national level in China.We further categorize climate policies by types, such as regulatory/administrative, fiscal, market-based, informative, innovation, diplomatic, and other.