Shanxi province's emission trading over the past three years has reached 510 million yuan ($83 million), according to its economy and information technology commission. Shanxi got approval as a pilot for emissions trading in 2010 and opened its trading center in 2012, and is including emissions trading in its environmental protection and pollution reduction effort.

So far, it has seen more than 780 emission trades and has come up with an emissions trading policy, explains Zhang Baohui, head of the center, and it has an electronic emissions-trading site that promotes trading in sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, fumes, industrial dust, oxygen demand, and ammonia nitrogen that has been going since 2012.

China first introduced emissions trading mechanism in the 1990s and began paying for emission rights in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Hebei provinces, the Inner Mongolia region, and the cities of Tianjin and Chongqing.