Do the Compliance Requirements under China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Schemes Have Adequate Legal Certainty?

China employs emissions trading schemes (ETS)—a cap-and-trade mechanism—to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and has developed a range of regulatory instruments that have been updated in recent years. Legal certainty is essential for any regulatory instrument to effectively regulate and guide the behavior of regulated entities. Given the importance of legal certainty principle, this paper reviews the compliance requirements under China’s ETS regulatory instruments and examines their legal certainty from a law and economics perspective. This paper finds that while the general compliance requirements of China’s ETSs are similar, the regulatory details vary. It further argues that the compliance requirements of China’s ETSs do not fully achieve legal certainty, potentially hindering their effective im-plementation.