The Feasibility of Constructing a Greenhouse Gas Emission Assessment System in China and Its Legislative Path

Abstract

In order to achieve the ambitious carbon peak and neutrality targets, China is in the process of revising Environmental Impact Assessment Law. This study is devoted to the proposition of how to incorporate activities regulating greenhouse gas emissions into the legal system of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This study is inspired by the Embedding Theory, which provides the explanatory framework that allows economic activities to be regulated by political and social norms. This framework requires a relevance and cost analysis of the three indicators required to regulate economic activities: administrative support, technical support, and legal support. The results reveal that the structure of China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Assessment (GGEA) system and that of the EIA system are closely related and that the generation and transaction costs involved in the process of institution embedding are low. This result satisfies the requirements of the Embedding Theory for achieving institutional coupling. In conclusion, this study provides an outlook on the direction of the revision of China’s EIA Law from the perspective of building a rule of law pathway for GGEA with “4EM-3CS-3RC” as the core.