Revenue from carbon pricing

Carbon pricing already raises over $20 billion p.a. worldwide.  This has the potential to grow by an order of magnitude.  What to do with this money will be an increasing important issue.

As carbon pricing spreads around the world (see here) substantial amounts of money are now being raised.  The amounts depend on:

1. The coverage of each scheme
2. The number of allowances allocated free of charge (under an emissions trading scheme) or the extent of tax exemptions and rebates (under a carbon tax).
3. The level of the price in each scheme

Estimating these parameters for each scheme around the world indicates that about $22 billion will be raised globally this year, excluding the value of free allowances, tax exemptions and rebates.  The breakdown of this total is shown in the chart below.  (The data is a rough estimate in some cases because summary data on coverage and rebates is not readily available for some schemes, especially carbon taxes in Europe.  Also, average prices for allowances over the whole of this year are not yet known.)

About three quarters of the revenue raised is in Europe.  Interestingly, revenues from auctioning of allowances under the EUETS are lower than those from other carbon pricing in Europe, which includes carbon price support in the UK and carbon taxes in France and Scandinavia.  This is in part because EUETS revenues have been reduced this year by the postponement of some allowance auctioning (backloading).

The remainder of revenues raised worldwide are from the various North American schemes and the (rather low) carbon tax in Japan.  There is no auctioning of allowances under the New Zealand or South Korean schemes, or in China, so they don’t yet contribute to the total.

Indicative estimates of revenue from carbon pricing in 2015

Notes: Estimates based on prevailing prices multiplied by volumes covered, excluding freely allocated allowances and tax exemptions and rebates.  Data is estimated from a variety of sources and totals may be lower or higher or than shown as assumptions have been adopted for coverage and rebates where data is not readily available.  Small variations in coverage can affect estimates significantly in individual jurisdictions because of high prices.The Mexican carbon tax is excluded as it does not price emissions from natural gas so more resembles an energy tax on some fuels.  Other Europe includes Portugal, Switzerland and Iceland.

Revenue is significantly higher this year than it was last year, when the total raised worldwide was around $15 billion.  This mainly reflects increases in:

• prices and volumes of EUAs auctioned;
• the level of UK carbon price support;
• the price and coverage of the French carbon tax; and
• the coverage of the California and Quebec schemes, which expanded to cover transport and other sectors in January this year.

The total revenue raised has the potential to increase vastly if:

• new schemes are introduced, especially nationally in China as planned and in the USA, or coverage of existing schemes is expanded;
• the amount of auctioning is increased, with the amount of auctioning in the planned national scheme in China especially important; and
• prices rise under the major schemes, including the EUETS.

Indeed, over time revenue raised globally could increase by an order of magnitude or from current levels to reach into the hundreds of billions in the longer term.  However even if revenue grows to approximately ten times current levels over the next decade or more it would still represent only perhaps 0.2% of global GDP, and so remain only a small proportion of total flows within the world economy.

This is nevertheless a substantial amount of money, and there is likely to be increasing debate about how it might best be used.  I will return to this in my next post.

Adam Whitmore – 26^th October 2015

A paper on revenues from carbon pricing including much of this material has been published by the Climate Markets and Investment Association (CMIA), see http://cmia.net/forums/climate-finance-forum/climate-finance-forum-docs