Australia's Carbon Tax: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing?
Clive Spash and
Alex Lo
MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany
Abstract:
The Australian Government has produced a CO2-equivalent tax proposal with a difference, it is a short prelude to an emission trading scheme that will allow the increasing rate of emissions to continue, while being a net cost to the Treasury. That cost extends to allowing major emitters to make guaranteed windfall profits from pollution permits. The emission trading scheme suffers numerous problems, but the issues raised show taxes can also be watered down and made ineffectual through concessions. Taxpayers will get no assets from the billions of dollars to be spent buying-off the coal generators or other polluters. The scheme hopes to stimulate private investors to create an additional 12 percent in renewable electricity generation by 2020. A serious emissions reducing alternative would be to create a nationalised electricity sector with 100 percent renewable energy within a decade. We explore the difficulties of implementing meaningful greenhouse gas taxes in Australia.
Keywords: greenhouse gases; taxation; emission trading; climate change; regulation; renewable energy; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 H23 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-10-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-reg and nep-res
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)
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Journal Article: Australia's Carbon Tax: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing? (2012) 
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:33997
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