The global market managed to bill 46.63 billion euros in revenue raised through taxes on corporate carbon emissions over the course of 2020, an increase of nearly 18% over 2019, the World Bank revealed in a report published Tuesday.
The financial institution warns, however, that in many regions of the world, carbon taxes remain below the values needed to promote structural changes that meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, ratified by some 200 countries in 2015, and which states that in the coming years global warming must stay below 2°C, and preferably 1.5°C.
“Most carbon taxes still remain well below the range of 36 euros per ton of carbon, an essential target for the treaty signed in France to meet its objective,” the World Bank report can read.
The European market for carbon permits, where Portugal is included, and which a few weeks ago broke the record of 50 euros per ton of CO2, was the one that suffered the most, with a 30% increase in prices since the second half of last year.
In 2021, the hunger for regulatory tools to tighten the noose on corporate emissions remains insatiable. So far, there are 64 tax or trade tools around the world that make entities pay for the carbon they pollute the environment with, up considerably from 58 in 2020, boosting the world’s capacity to mitigate emissions by 21% over the previous year.
Currently, the great hope for emissions reduction has its eyes turned to China, the world’s largest carbon market, which earlier this year presented the globe with good news by launching CO2 ETs (in this case under the name “China’s Emissions Trading Scheme”).
Experts believe that this new tax measure from Beijing will cover around 30% of Chinese emissions, about 4 billion tons of CO2, roughly, according to the accounts of the ‘South China Morning Post’.
