China is implementing what is expected to become the world's largest CO2 emissions trading system. To reduce emissions, the nation employs a tradable performance standard (TPS), a rate-based instrument differing significantly from cap&trade (C&T) and a carbon tax, emissions pricing instruments used elsewhere. With matching analytically and numerically solved models, we assess the cost-effectiveness and distributional impacts of China's TPS for reducing CO2 emissions from the power sector.

Abstract

Great hopes have been placed on devolution policies as a means of attaining sustainable forest management in developing countries.

Restoring tree cover in tropical countries has the potential to benefit millions of smallholders through improvements
in income and environmental services. However, despite their dominant landholding shares in many
countries, smallholders’ role in restoration has not been addressed in prior global or pan-tropical restoration
studies. We fill this lacuna by using global spatial data on trees and people, national indicators of enabling
conditions, and micro-level expert information. We find that by 2050, low-cost restoration is feasible within 280,