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其他
Power Spot Market Pilot & Third-Party Pollution Control
Chinese government is going to implement the spot power market pilot in eight regions soon. As for the environment protection side, the government also published a guideline to promote and regulate the third-party pollution control.
China to Launch a Power Spot Market Pilot by the end of 2018
On August 28, 2017, the Chinese government issued a notice on launching a power spot market pilot (the“Pilot”) by the end of 2018. This signals another step forward in the electricity market reform, as it aims to change the electricity distribution system from a planned mode to an open and competitive one. It will also support the increasing medium and long term power trading.
There are eight regions selected as the pilot zones in the first round of the Pilot, including Guangdong, West Inner Mongolia, Zhejiang, Shanxi, Shandong, Fujian, Sichuan and Gansu. These regions are selected for different reasons. Guangdong and Shanxi are among the earliest places to implement the electricity market reform, and thus have built a good market base for the Pilot. Zhejiang is a big user with a sound economic foundation. West Inner Mongolia’s independent power system will make it easier for the Pilot to be implemented locally. Sichuan and Gansu are in need to increase the local power consumption in order to reduce the abandonment of renewable energy.
The provincial government of each region will be responsible for making its own scheme and schedule for the local implementation of the Pilot. The schemes should focus on establishing daily time-of-use rates, clearing mechanism and congestion management mechanism of the power spot market. The schemes should also include certain complementary and supporting mechanism, such as policies on medium and long term trading, transmission and distribution tariff, priority power generation and purchase, the guaranteed purchase of generation from the renewable energy, risk control for power generation companies and contingency plan for power spot market.
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Detailed Guideline for Implementing Third-Party Pollution Control
In 2014, the State Council announced the general principles for promoting and regulating the third-party pollution control. However, as the third-party pollution control is still at its preliminary stage in China, it leaves plenty of issues to be addressed in practice. Therefore, the Ministry of Environmental Protection recently issued a more detailed guideline (the “Guideline”) for its implementation. Here are some highlights in the Guideline:
(1) If the third-party pollution treatment service providers (the “Third Parties”) cause environmental pollution due to their falsification conduct in providing pollution treatment services, they shall be jointly and severally liable with other responsible parties causing the environmental pollution;
(2) As the Environment Protection Laws mandate the pollutant discharging entities to establish account record for the pollution treatment facilities,the Guideline also imposes this requirement on the Third Parties;
(3) The government will encourage Third Parties to disclose information on the treatment progress and results. Report for reward policies and complaint dealing mechanism will also be improved to furnish the information disclosing platform;
(4) The pollution reduction that Third Parties achieved can be credited to the accounts of pollutant discharging entities. And Third Parties would be able to share part of the benefits resulted from the emission trading through agreement with the pollutant discharging entities.
(5) The government will also promote new financial tools, such as setting up local “Green Fund” to finance the third-party treatment projects, and introducing compulsory liability insurances into environmental high risk areas,etc.