carbon tax

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Fuel taxes, building incentives, energy efficiency regulations.We often hear experts, politicians, representatives of the industrial sector and citizens discussing which political and economic solutions are most advantageous and effective in combating global warming and in applying the so-called ecological transition. An action that has become almost an imperative since, almost 35 years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first report in which it found that human activities were causing a substantial increase in carbon dioxide concentrations ( CO₂) and other gases in the atmosphere, resulting in warming of the planet's temperatures.Since then there have been many United Nations Climate Conferences, governments and public awareness of the effects of the climate crisis and the need for decisive action has increased, and countries around...

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The climate crisis is a fact, as is yours anthropic origin:The relationship of the 2021 IPCC showed that the increase in temperature compared to the pre-industrial age, thanks to empirical research and numerical simulations, depends mostly on human activity. Yet still today, in one mixture of ignorance and bad faith, there is no shortage of inroads in public opinion and politics to discredit the efforts of scientists, activists and a part of the ruling class who are pushing for an ecological transition, both from a legislative point of view and from the point of view of electoral consensus.One of the arguments used in Italy and abroad by the conjunction of climate deniers and inactivists is the one according to which the climate transition it would be ridden from the left to impose dirigiste and statist policies, motivated more by hatred for the free market than by science. The sca...

About 10 years ago, a very thick book written by a French economist became a surprising bestseller. It was called “Capital in the 21st Century.” In it, Thomas Piketty traces the history of income and wealth inequality over the past couple of hundred years. The book’s insights struck a chord with people who felt a growing sense of economic inequality but didn’t have the data to back it up. I was one of them. It made me wonder, how much carbon pollution is being generated to create wealth for a small group of extremely rich households? Two kids, 10 years and a Ph.D. later, I finally have some answers. In a new study, colleagues and I investigated U.S. households’ personal responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2019. We previously studied emissions tied to consumption – the stuff people buy. This time, we looked at emissions used in generating people’s incomes, including investment income. If you’ve ever thought abo...

Companies trading iron, steel, cement, aluminium, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity with the European Union are now required to communicate emissions (direct and indirect) of greenhouse gases linked to their products before crossing the border.The objective of the measure is threefold:avoid “carbon leakage” (which occurs when EU-based companies move CO2-intensive production abroad to countries where less rigorous climate policies), prevent highly polluting foreign products from undermining the continent's climate efforts and prevent European companies from losing competitiveness, subject to more stringent environmental standards. The one that came into force last Sunday is only the first phase of the process that the EU has called the 'Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism' (CBAM) and which will ultimately involve the payment of a tax on emissions starting from 2026. of CO2 of the products - until that date it will be sufficient to present a timely report of imports.But in...

The European Union is embarking on an experiment that will expand its climate policies to imports for the first time. It’s called a carbon border adjustment, and it aims to level the playing field for the EU’s domestic producers by taxing energy-intensive imports like steel and cement that are high in greenhouse gas emissions but aren’t already covered by climate policies in their home countries. If the border adjustment works as planned, it could encourage the spread of climate policies around the world. But the EU plan – which members of the European Parliament preliminarily agreed to on Dec. 13, 2022 – as well as most attempts to evaluate the impact of such policies, is missing an important source of cross-border carbon flows: trade in fossil fuels themselves. As energy analysts, we decided to take a closer look at what including fossil fuels would mean. In a newly released paper, we analyzed the impact and found that including fossil fuels in...