Carbon Tax - Canada's Green Industrial Revolution

25/1/07 10:36AM
From http://www.huffstrategy.com.

Powering Canada's Green Industrial Revolution

Canadian action on climate change is unfocused, ineffective and way too complicated.

There is, however, a straightforward mechanism that, with fairness, predictability and certainty, would put a substantial cork in our carbon emissions.

This cork is a simple carbon tax that would harness $15 billion a year to pave Canada's path toward a green industrial revolution based on a low-carbon economy.

First, a basic fact: In 2004, nearly 50 per cent of Canada's total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were courtesy of just a few hundred facilities.

It is much easier to corral emissions from these large facilities than to round up Canada's 18.2 million passenger cars and trucks, which accounted for only 9.7 per cent of Canada's 2004 GHG emissions.

Here's how it would work.

Announce that, effective in 2008, all extractive industry and power generating large final emitters in Canada would be levied an initial modest tax of $30 per tonne of CO2 equivalent (CO2e). This would be accompanied by a specific schedule of the carbon tax's rise over the coming decades.

The monies flowing from this tax would be pigeonholed into each facility's individual trust accounts and managed by the 'Carbon Innovation Fund' (CIF). The legal rights to this money would not belong to the government, but the facility itself, with certain provisions.

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