Linking Australia to China’s soon-to-be-launched emissions trading scheme is one of the options Australia’s main opposition party is looking at while it designs a carbon market proposal that it will take to next year’s election, party leader Bill Shorten said Monday.

Shorten’s Labor party last week said it would set a 2030 target of cutting emissions 45% below 2005 levels and bring emissions to net zero by 2050 if it wins the 2016 election.

Labor plans to set up an emissions trading scheme with international links, although the final details of how the scheme would look won’t be ready until March.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Paris on Monday, Shorten said Labor is “interested in looking at China” and that he was aware of the opportunities that would come with a link to China’s national ETS.

China will launch its national ETS in 2017, but the market is expected to begin fairly small and gradually scale up until 2020.

Chinese officials have previously said that the ETS would be an entirely domestic affair until 2020, but that China would study potential links to other markets after that.

Shorten told Carbon Pulse that no contact had been made with the Chinese side on a common carbon market. He stressed that it is early days for Labor’s ETS proposal and all options remain on the table, including setting up a link to the EU ETS or simply allowing for purchases of UN offsets.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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