Last Spring the US Energy Information Agency forecast that China’s rising coal demand will lead global carbon emissions with an increase of over 50 percent between 2005 and 2030. This bleak prediction stands in distressing contrast to targets set forth by climate leaders in Japan, Bali and Europe to reduce global emissions by 50 percent by 2050.? A significant development during the Bali round of UN climate negotiations is that the Chinese delegation for the very first time pledged to mitigate GHG emissions in a “measurable, reportable, verifiable” manner.

In response to this pledge, the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation (iCET) is developing concrete and practical tools to help China meet its stated goal. iCET is proposing to work with The Climate Registry of the United States (TCR) and some key Chinese governmental agencies to develop an online energy and carbon registration system to monitor the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from various domestic and multinational corporations as well as local economic development areas. iCET will develop a pilot registry based in Guangdong province with the intent to eventually expand the registry to a national scale. The pilot project phase will allow iCET and its partners to determine the best implementation practices for the registry, resulting in a more effective system when it is expanded to the national level.