China's first environmental resources exchange opened Friday in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province.

It is the country's first business to facilitate transactions of companies' pollutant quota. For example, a company has limits to how much it can pollute. If it does not reach that limit, it can now sell its excess allowance to smaller companies.

The new establishment, called the Hubei Provincial Environmental Resource Exchange, will mainly concentrate on companies' pollutant quota, according to Li Bing, chief of the Hubei Provincial Environmental Protection Department.

The exchange is meant to help smaller businesses with pollution control. It also enables the government to amass extra funding to support environmental conservation efforts, said Li.

For now, the main pollutant allowances available for exchange are chemical oxygen demand (COD) and sulfur dioxide.

Hubei provincial government put forward the idea of building a trading platform for pollutant discharging rights in 2006 and published its detailed plan last October.

Wuhan Optics Valley United Property Rights Exchange conducted a trading on a trial basis March 18. Its quota of discharging 86.5 tons of COD and 413.2 tons of sulfur dioxide were traded in one day.

The unveiling ceremony of the exchange was attended by Zhou Shengxian, Minister of Environmental Protection, and Luo Qingquan, Secretary of Hubei Provincial Committee of Communist Party of China.

(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2009)