China announces carbon tax

[Willinois]

The line about China building one coal plant a week was always a sad cop-out. Many of those were small plants for a single factory. They were also building much more clean energy than America.

Now China is doing cap-and-trade and a carbon tax in response to public outrage about air pollution. It looks like the US will have to take responsibility for reducing our own emissions without pointing the finger of blame at China as an excuse for inaction.

China announces carbon tax

Quote:China has announced it will establish a carbon tax by adding CO2 to the scope of existing environmental levies.

A statement published on the Ministry of Finance’s website detailed a series of tax reforms in the country.

These included the proposals to bolster existing efforts “to continue to improve and implement tax policy to support energy conservation, environmental protection and comprehensive utilization of resources”. Discussions on a Chinese carbon tax have been on-going for years but the latest statement now provides a glimpse of how this might be structured.

The document, written by Jia Chen, secretary of the tax administration pledges “to actively promote environmental tax reform, existing sewage charges to the environmental protection tax, and carbon dioxide emissions into the scope of the collection, and collecting authorities be changed by the environmental protection department of the local tax authorities.”