Hosted jointly by EU Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA) and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China (MEE), a workshop on readiness and risk mitigation at the start of an ETS was held in Beijing on 13 October 2020 aiming at sharing with Chinese policy-makers about the lessons and experiences from the EU-ETS.

SUN Zhen, Director-General of Department of Climate Change, MEE gave a welcome remarks to introduce the development of China national ETS, highlighting the determination of  the Government of China to push forward the start of China national ETS even facing  the challenges  introduced by the global impact of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Correspondingly, Ms. Vicky POLLARD, the Acting Deputy Head of Unit of DG CLIMA, jointly with Mr. Sebastien PAQUOT, the Counsellor of Climate Action and Environment from EU Delegation to China, outlined the vision and goals of EU Green Deal, and acclaimed that the launch of Chinese national ETS would mark a promising global progress of tackling climate change through carbon pricing policy tools.

Three prominent experts, Mr. Jos Delbeke, Professor at European University Institute (EUI) Florence, Mr. Peter Vis, Senior Project Associate at European University Institute (EUI) Florence, and Mr. István Bart, Consultant, who had been involved and in charge of the EU ETS in its first days were invited to join the workshop and share their knowledge and experiences through video conference platform. They introduced the regulatory framework and overall preparation for launch of EU ETS from their respective professional points of view. The topics widely covered Allowance allocation, cap setting, and registry and trading platforms. This workshop also provided an opportunity for open, peer-to-peer exchanges between EU and Chinese experts, which in their feedback contributed to the preparation for a smooth start of trading in China's national ETS .

The workshop is under the EU-China ETS Cooperation Project, which aims at continuing to support China in building a nation-wide emission trading system that contributes to reduce its emissions.