A New Grey Relational Analysis Model Based on the Characteristic of Inscribed Core (IC-GRA) and Its Application on Seven-Pilot Carbon Trading Markets of China

In recent years, the study of the factors affecting the carbon trading price plays an important role in promoting the carbon trading markets and the sustainable development of green economy. However, due to the short establishment time of China’s carbon trading market, the carbon trading price data of the pilot markets were not complete and have the typical characteristics of poor information. The traditional grey correlation model cannot effectively identify the volatility and the grey correlation coefficient of trading data. In this paper, an inscribed cored grey relational analysis model (IC-GRA) is constructed by extracting the values of the triangle inscribed center of the time series sample. Through numerical examples and empirical analysis, it is verified that IC-GRA not only satisfies the four axioms of traditional grey correlation but also avoids the influence of outliers of time series fluctuation and improves the discriminability of the grey correlation coefficient. The empirical results of the IC-GRA model in China’s seven pilot carbon trading markets show that: 1. among international carbon trade factor, the biggest influence factor carbon trade price is different in pilot markets. The price of natural gas has a greater correlation with the carbon price of carbon trading markets in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Chongqing. The futures price of Certified Emission Reduction (CER) has a strong correlation with the carbon price of Shanghai and Beijing carbon trading markets; the price of Hubei carbon trading market is the largest related to crude oil future price in the New York Mercantile Exchange ( NYMEX). 2. Air Quality Index (AQI) is most relevant to the market carbon price of carbon trading, followed by the trading turnover and trading volume of the carbon trading market. Therefore, studying the carbon trading price of the carbon trading market plays a positive role in improving the sustainable development in those areas.