China has taken a series of co-ordinated steps in 2024 to strengthen its green finance architecture, finalising the Green and Low-Carbon Transition Industry Guidance Catalogue and relaunching the China Certified Emission Reduction market — a carbon crediting mechanism that had been suspended since 2017 — as authorities push to align the financial system more closely with the country's climate objectives and emissions-reduction commitments.
The People's Bank of China has been central to this effort, working alongside other regulators to advance a suite of policies that collectively represent one of the most ambitious phases of green finance development China has undertaken. The measures span carbon markets, disclosure standards, insurance products, and sector-specific financing guidance, signalling a deliberate shift from piecemeal initiatives toward a more integrated and comprehensive policy framework for sustainable finance.
CATALOGUE AND CARBON MARKET TAKE SHAPE
The Green and Low-Carbon Transition Industry Guidance Catalogue provides a standardised classification of activities and sectors eligible for green finance support, giving lenders, bond issuers, and investors a common reference framework for directing capital toward qualifying projects and assets. Finalising the catalogue in 2024 addresses a longstanding gap in China's green finance system, where the absence of a comprehensive and universally recognised taxonomy had complicated efforts to measure, verify, and compare green lending and investment across institutions.
The revival of the China Certified Emission Reduction market is particularly consequential. The CCER scheme allows project developers to generate carbon credits from eligible emissions-reduction activities, which can then be purchased by companies seeking to offset their own emissions or meet compliance obligations under China's national carbon trading framework. Its suspension in 2017 had left a meaningful gap in the country's carbon market ecosystem, and its relaunch now provides a functioning voluntary crediting mechanism to complement the national emissions trading system already operational for power sector entities.
Alongside the catalogue and the CCER relaunch, China also introduced national carbon footprint management standards and advanced unified corporate disclosure requirements for climate-related financial information. Standardised disclosure is viewed as foundational infrastructure for green finance markets, enabling investors and lenders to assess the environmental credentials of counterparties on a consistent basis and reducing the risk of greenwashing in labelled financial products.
GREEN INSURANCE AND DISCLOSURE STANDARDS ADVANCED
Regulators also advanced green insurance standards during 2024, recognising that insurance products play an important and often underappreciated role in managing climate-related financial risks for both households and businesses. By establishing common standards for green insurance offerings, authorities aim to expand market participation, reduce information asymmetries between providers and clients, and build confidence among both insurers and policyholders in sustainability-labelled products across the Chinese domestic market.
The cumulative effect of these interconnected measures is to create a more cohesive and enforceable green finance framework spanning China's entire financial system. With the guidance catalogue, carbon credit market, corporate disclosure rules, and insurance standards advancing in tandem, financial regulators are laying the institutional infrastructure needed for large-scale capital reallocation toward lower-carbon economic activities. Market participants will be watching closely how implementation proceeds, and whether the coordination between the People's Bank of China and sectoral regulators produces durable results at scale.