Market Mechanisms for Reducing Emissions and the Introduction of a Flexible Consumption Tax

Since its founding institutions the European Economic Community and Eratom, the European Union has paid great attention to energy issues. However, its powers have been updated in relatively recent times. Similarly, the EU has promoted in the post-Kyoto Protocol environmental issues with a leading by example approach and implementing an ambitious plan to decarbonize the economy with the energy transition and emission limitation through a market instrument, the emission trading system. The European emissions trading system has been the most ambitious management of negative externalities related to GHG set-up at the international level. The EU now considers that the costs of ecological industrial transition could limit the ability of European industries to compete in the globalized market with industries not subject to similar limits and costs. The EU intends to adopt a carbon adjustment tax at the border, to limit the phenomenon of reallocation and compensate for environmental costs. This paper analyses the various proposals and their advantages and disadvantages. The focus is on the charge on emissions mechanism, which is one of the three proposals the European Economic and Social Committee suggested to the European Commission for further investigation in view of the current competitive asymmetry now recognized by the EU Commission itself. The charge on emissions would value industrial emissions directly within the VAT and use the blockchain to track the emissive supply chain of products.