World Bank: number of carbon pricing schemes has doubled since 2012
The World Bank said on Sunday that the number of carbon pricing mechanisms worldwide has almost doubled since 2012
The World Bank said on Sunday that the number of carbon pricing schemes worldwide has almost doubled since 2012 but the majority of schemes currently have prices that are too low to help them prevent catastrophic impacts of climate change.
Carbon pricing mechanisms including emissions trading schemes in California and China now cover about 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and are helping to generate significant momentum in the build up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December, according to the World Bank.
The number of new and planned carbon pricing mechanisms has risen to 38 from 20 since 2012, with South Korea opening its emissions trading scheme this year and Chile and South Africa planning to introduce a taxes carbon emissions.
Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change, said: There is a growing sense of inevitability ... that there will be a price on carbon."
Carbon pricing is designed to move investments away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy and the World Bank’s study found that prices ranged from less than a dollar a tonne of carbon dioxide in Mexico to $130 a tonne in Sweden.
The study found that worldwide carbon taxes and markets are too low to help prevent an average global temperature increase of 2°C above pre-industrial times that scientists say would cause catastrophic impacts of climate change.
The study estimates the combined value of global carbon pricing mechanisms at $50 billion a year, with $34 billion from markets and the remaining $16 billion from taxes.
In 2014 73 countries and more than 1,000 companies urged world leaders to introduce a price on carbon and Kyte said the group is a "powerful coalition" that will make an important announcement before the U.N. conference in Paris.
