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The Low-Carbon Pilot (LCP) program in China is an important national initiative aiming to facilitate climate experimentation. Thus far, 87 local governments have become climate pilots and are tasked with developing innovative climate solutions with the hope that these innovations can be applied nationally. The LCP adopts a uniquely Chinese approach to policymaking that is characterized by both bottom-up experimentation and top-down control and has been described as a success in the official discourse. However, using two case studies from Guangdong and Jilin, we show that there could be significant variation in performance and willingness to conduct experimentation among the climate pilots. The presence of variation suggests that the top-down steering mechanisms of the LCP are not conducive to climate experimentation and have the unintended consequences of encouraging risk-averse behaviors. We further show that local factors – leadership support, communities of practice, and alignment of interests – are important factors enabling success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores issues about governing domestic cap-and-trade systems for mitigating carbon emissions. The implementation of these systems in China warrants investigation, because they could restructure the governing relationships between public and private actors and create conditions for networked forms of governance. The study identifies key challenges presented by an emerging network supporting carbon market development in Guangdong. It provides an assessment of network functioning in terms of capacity building, actor engagement, and rule setting and implementation. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with non-state network constituents, coupled with a review of policy development. We find that this emerging network has demonstrated some of the key network functions, mainly capacity building, and can be seen as a partial substitute for the state in this area. However, more could be done to strengthen participation and enable power sharing in steering and coordinating the decision-making process. The key features of reflexivity and power sharing in decision-making and steering are not clearly represented, leading to a conclusion that this governance network remains underdeveloped. This article contributes to the debates on the contested role of cap-and-trade systems in displacing hierarchical approaches and empowering a wider range of actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]