Nicoletta Batini, Ian W.H. Parry, and Mr. Philippe Wingender
Denmark has a highly ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 70 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. While there is general agreement that carbon pricing should be the centerpiece of Denmark’s mitigation strategy, pricing needs to be effective, address equity and leakage concerns, and be reinforced by additional measures at the sectoral level. The strategy Denmark develops can be a good prototype for others to follow. This paper discusses mechanisms to scale up domestic carbon pricing, compensate households, and possibly combine pricing with a border carbon adjustment. It also recommends the use of revenue-neutral feebate schemes to strengthen mitigation incentives, particularly for transportation and agriculture, fisheries and forestry, though these schemes could also be applied more widely.
Nicoletta Batini, Mr. Simon Black, Ms. Oana Luca, and Ian W.H. Parry
The Netherlands has ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for the future - to cut them by 49 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 95 percent by 2050. These targets and the likely new EU-wide targets under the recent EU Green Deal entail a rapid acceleration in decarbonization. This paper discusses the government’s mitigation strategy and advances several recommendations to complement and reinforce that strategy and to achieve better alignement of the effective carbon prices across sectors. The paper discusses alternatives to make the recently-introduced industry carbon levy more effcient and recomends the use of revenue-neutral feebate schemes in industry, transportation, buildings, and agriculture. For power generation, it recommends eliminating taxes on residential and industrial electricity, supplementing the coal phaseout plan with an increase in the CO2 emissions floor price. The impacts of these reforms on consumption would be low and relatively evenly split across the income distribution.