Norway doubles carbon tax and boosts environment funding by £1bn
Europe / Economics & Innovation
27 Dec 2012
Norway is doubling carbon tax on its North Sea oil industry and setting up a £1bn fund to tackle the impact of climate change in the developing world
The Norwegian government has proposed increasing carbon tax on offshore oil companies by £21 to £45 per tonne of CO2, and implementing a tax of £5.50 per tonne of CO2 on its fishing industry.
The country will also boost its funds for combating climate change by £1bn, as well as stepping up spending on forestry programmes to £44m and spending £69m on carbon credits to help offset emissions, accelerate carbon neutral building regulations and push the adoption of electric vehicles.
These initiatives are some of the most radical yet for an oil-producing nation, and pose a strong political challenge to other countries, particularly the UK and Scottish governments, which have never supported a carbon tax on the oil and gas industries.
Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, commented: “Norway is showing how you can use oil income to fund the transition out of oil. We should be doing the same with UK oil revenues.”
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Shudder. These aren’t solutions. This is top down meddling.
We don’t need more building regulation, if anything we need building de-regulation allowing simple dwellings to be constructed, earthships for example. We don’t need more TAX on energy (passed on to the consumer in the form of higher bills) with the proceeds going to fund some enviro-quango in the 3rd world, we need local and national solutions in our HOME countries to transition away from fossil fuels. With carbon credits and offsetting the devils are in the details, such as giveaway credits, incentive to cheat the system and the whole premise that carbon reduction in one country doesn’t mean carbon emissions won’t rise in the developing world, actually it’s guaranteed.
We need smart, systems based approach to our energy and ecological demands.