Green finance: Cleaning up in China

Baffled at first by the unwonted benevolence of the clean development mechanism, Chinese enterprises rapidly jumped on the carbon trading bandwagon. There have been instances where companies have metaphorically as much as literally cleaned up – either way the net effect is beneficial to the environment. Chris Wright reports.

Green finance special section

Can restriction talk be more than hot air?

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CHINA IS RENOWNED for its opportunism but it takes a special kind of entrepreneurial zest to make money out of your own pollution. In the curious world of carbon trading, China accounts for perhaps half of all credits traded with the west, as unseen utilities half a world away effectively pay to build wind farms and clean up freon plants the length and breadth of China.

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