More than a quarter of all companies covered by Beijing’s municipal carbon laws ignored a key reporting deadline, with some powerful companies questioning the local government trading body’s authority to regulate them. Beijing’s carbon trading market, one of six set up in China to rein in rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions, caps carbon dioxide from nearly 500 local enterprises. Most of them must hand over permits to the government to cover for their emissions, while some must only report their CO2 levels. But 140 of them missed an April deadline to submit a verified report of their 2013 emissions, a key to determining how many permits each firm must hand over to the government to cover for CO2 output. Some of the firms implied that Beijing’s Development and Reform Commission (DRC), which operates the scheme, did not have the authority to issue such orders. Companies said they were waiting for a “red-header document” used for orders issued by the highest levels of government, whose name would be printed in red on the letterhead. For example, the Chief Executive of the China Railway Corp, one of the companies supposed to submit the report, is higher in rank than the Director of the Beijing DRC. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) routinely ignore environmental regulations issued by local governments, one of the main reasons why China is struggling to cut soaring pollution levels despite issuing a raft of environmental policies in the last couple of years.