You are warmly invited to the March Earth Observation Network seminar with Dr Shuang Zhang of the Imperial Business Scholl. Shuang will be giving a presentation on “Can the Market Tame CO2 Emissions? Using satellite and ground data to assess firm-level emissions in China”. The summary of the seminar is as follows, please e-mail neil.jennings@imperial.ac.uk if you would like to be sent the calendar invite:

The world’s largest carbon emitter, China, launched the world’s largest emissions trading scheme to reduce carbon emissions in 2021. Unlike the mass-based EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which caps the absolute level of emissions, China provides a different model: a rate-based scheme that regulates carbon intensity. Researchers know essentially nothing about the first major rate-based program’s first order effects, which could have important global consequences. This project will provide the first empirical research on how emissions and outcomes respond to the world’s largest market-based environmental policy. I will evaluate the causal effects of China’s national emissions trading scheme on firm outputs and carbon emissions. The primary challenge is the lack of reliable data. To address this challenge, I will analyze both firm-level data on the ground and data derived from satellite images, the latter of which will serve as an objective benchmark.