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On November 28, 2013, Beijing’s carbon emissions trading opened on Beijing’s Environmental Exchange. As one of the pilot cities, Beijing has been pursuing low-carbon development strategies under state intervention and market regulation. This paper chooses the carbon market, a medium through which Beijing manages emission reduction, as the object of study. Firstly, we compare the basic construction circumstances of Beijing with other pilot cities. Then we qualitatively analyze the development of Beijing’s carbon market from the perspective of transaction status, execution of the contract, and improvement of the policies and regulations. Finally, we use the TOPSIS model to develop a comprehensive evaluation system of Beijing’s carbon market. It is used to quantitatively evaluate the operational performance and maturity of the mechanism. The results show that: Beijing’s carbon market has good comprehensive capabilities, ranking second place among seven pilot markets; but the maturity of Beijing’s carbon market is relatively poor for insufficient market liquidity; its operations are well managed, but economic efficiency still need to be improved; the depth of transaction and the effect of reduction in emissions make it meaningful. Therefore, in order to improve the construction of Beijing’s carbon market, measures should be taken as follows:(1) strengthening the quota management, and increasing carbon trading activity to avoid poor market liquidity; (2) accelerating emission reduction actions and encouraging technology innovation, such as: carrying out several policies and measures supporting new energy and energy saving & emission reduction, and increasing investment and subsidy in research and development for the technology innovation of firms etc.; (3) improving regulatory mechanism and enhancing the disclosure of carbon trading, such as: drawing lessons from the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) about measuring, reporting and verification system (MRV). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon emissions in China have attracted increasing world attention with rapid urbanization of this country. It is critical for the government to identify the key factors causing these emissions and take controlling measures. Consistent results have not been achieved yet although some research has been conducted on the factors leading to emissions. Meanwhile, there is still considerable room to improve the methods of previous research. Index decomposition analysis (IDA) is the main method for quantifying the impact of different factors on carbon emissions. At present, the widely used forms of IDA are primarily the Laspeyres and the Divisia index methods. Compared with the Laspeyres and the majority of the Divisia index methods, the generalized Fisher index (GFI) decomposition method can eliminate the residuals and has better factor decomposition characteristics. This paper chooses Beijing as a typical example and analyzes the factors causing carbon emissions. Based on the extended Kaya identity, we built a multivariate generalized Fisher index decomposition model to measure the impacts of economic growth, population size, energy intensity and energy structure on energy-related carbon emissions from 1995 to 2012 in Beijing. The results show that the sustained growth of economic output in Beijing was the leading factor in carbon emissions. Population size had a stimulating effect on the growth of carbon emissions during this period; the pulling effect increased after 2003 and then decreased slightly after 2011 with a cumulative effect of 165.4%. Energy intensity was the primary factor restraining carbon emissions, and the inhibition effect increased yearly. The continuous optimization of the energy structure had no obvious inhibitory effect on carbon emissions. To control carbon emissions, Beijing should continue to adjust the mode of economic development and appropriately control the population size while improving energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]