More co-ordination between the world’s carbon markets would be welcome
ON DECEMBER 2ND environmental activists, businessmen and politicians will descend on Madrid for the 25th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change . The annual two-week shindig is a forum for countries to thrash out how exactly they plan to tackle climate change. In 2015 the event yielded the Paris agreement, which commits 187 signatories to limit global warming to “well below” 2°C, and ideally no more than 1.5°C, above pre-industrial temperatures.
On the agenda this year is article 6 of the Paris agreement. It states that there should be a “mechanism” for countries to trade greenhouse-gas emission credits across borders, so that countries that reduce their emissions substantially could sell the excess to large emitters. Such a scheme could be the foundation of an international carbon market and global carbon price. That kind of mechanism is far off. Governments were due to agree on what it might look like last year, but failed.
But there is little agreement about how much polluters should pay. Sweden has the highest tax rate in the world, at $127 per tonne of carbon dioxide, but most countries with a carbon price charge emitters less than $25 per tonne . The variation rankles high-emitting industries.
A bigger problem is that carbon levies in general are far too low. Experts reckon that a price of $40-80 per tonne is needed by 2020 to meet the Paris temperature targets. But only about 1% of global emissions are covered by such a price. The gap between the policies now in place and what is required to slow global warming is why another important task for delegates in Madrid will be to prepare for COP26, in Glasgow in 2020. That COP is expected to be a bigger event, because countries are expected to announce a round of new, bolder climate pledges. More ambition is certainly needed.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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