This law replaces the 2015 environment protection law, and it introduces several environmental criteria to classify investment projects including (1) scale, capacity, and type of production, business or services; (2) the area of land use, of land with water surface and/or of sea area, the scale of exploitation of natural resources; and (3) sensitive environmental factors. Such criteria will help determine which project is subject to environment impact preliminary assessment (EIPA), environment impact assessment (EIA) and environment permit.
The law introduces a domestic carbon market with an emissions trading scheme, where businesses will have an emissions quota that can be traded. The law also allows for a carbon tax.