Chile’s new centre-left government has said it is poised to unveil a tax on carbon emissions to boost the use of less polluting energy sources and fight climate change.
The measure, which forms part of a wider tax reform and will be detailed today, will include incentives for thermoelectric power plants to lower their emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for causing climate change.
“I think companies can adapt well, and those that adapt won’t need to pay the tax,” Energy Minister Maximo Pacheco told Reuters Newsagency.
He declined to say how high the tax would be and how much the government hoped to collect, but stressed electricity costs would not rise.
Many mines in the world’s number one copper producer are powered by coal-fired thermoelectric plants, which have come under increasing pressure from environmentalists.
Besides Chile, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Vietnam are all countries that have formally said they want to launch CO2 trading schemes.
At the same time Australia, which introduced a Emissions Trading Scheme in 2012, currently as a fixed price mechanism moving to a market based system in 2015, is trying to get rid of its ETS.
The scheme, introduced by the former Labor government, is set to link with the European Union ETS when its reverts to a market based scheme in July 2015.
The conservative Liberal-National government has been seeking to repeal the legislation but has so far been stopped from doing so by the opposition Labor Party and the Australian Greens Party blocking the repeal legislation in the upper house Senate.
