🛢💸 The real deal about Carbon Pricing: Difference between revisions

[[File:Carbon-Market-Watch_cement-industry-report-cover.png|thumb|Thumbnailed image|Carbon Market Watch cement industry report cover, in 2016.]]

Introduction to come.

==What is carbon pricing and what concepts stand behind it?==

https://www.i4ce.org/wp-core/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/i4ce-PrixCarbon-VA.pdf</ref> It is still considered today that one of the main efforts to mitigate climate change would come from finance mechanisms. “Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”<ref>Adoption of the Paris Agreement, Article 02, (c), UNFCC, 2015.

source: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf</ref> was one of the objectives of the 2015 Paris Agreement, following Kyoto Protocol.

==What are the flaws of carbon pricing?==

<strong>“<i>There are better ways of tackling climate change than by privatising the Earth's carbon-cycling capacity.</i>” (Larry Lohmann, 2006)</strong>

===Emissions Trading Schemes===

In the end, carbon market did not escape from the weakness of any young unregulated market, attracting so much scammers that Interpol, the international police, published a report about carbon trading crimes in 2013.<ref>See <i>Interpol Environmental Crime Program: Guide to carbon trading crime</i>, 2013.

source: https://www.interpol.int/Crimes/Environmental-crime/Pollution-crime</ref>

===Carbon taxes===

source: https://sandbag.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2020-SB-Path-of-least-resistance-1.2b_DIGI.pdf</ref> are particularly exposed to imports of low-cost coal electricity, because they have a significant electricity interconnection or because their energy policy contrasts with that of their non-European neighbouring countries. This, for sure, is a carbon leakage profitable to energy companies, shaping possible “offshore carbon havens”. That is why the new European Commission President has put forward border carbon adjustments; that could start with the power sector. This means to apply a carbon price to electricity imports, making them less appealing to Member States. Since 2015, EU imports more electricity that it exports; with Russia and Ukraine as main sources. In 2019, 33TWh of electricity worth €1,6B was imported into EU. It is still marginal, since it accounts for approximately 1% of EU’s total production; but much more interconnections and coal plants are planned.<ref>Sandbag NGO, <i>How Electricity generated from coal is leaking into the EU</i>, 2020.

source: https://sandbag.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2020-SB-Path-of-least-resistance-1.2b_DIGI.pdf</ref>

==What are the concrete effects of carbon pricing on climate?==

REDD Monitor website, Greta Thunberg: “We are not telling you to offset your emissions”, January 2020.

source: https://redd-monitor.org/2020/01/25/greta-thunberg-we-are-not-telling-you-to-offset-your-emissions/</ref>

==To conclude==

source 1: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/recession-did-not-lower-c02-emissions-6272333.html

source 2: https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1332</ref> Glen P. Peters, a Norwegian scientist who participated to the later study, considers that in some ways the financial crisis was a missed opportunity to curb future emissions worldwide… A potential next question to open the scope of this carbon pricing series will be: “Will the 2020 economic crisis, that arise from the disastrous COVID19 virus, eventually put some governments on good tracks to Paris pledges, or is it a short minor break on carbon emissions?”

== Notes ==