Article: Carbon pricing - you can’t keep a good idea down

Written By Helen Mountford

The introduction of added costs must be matched by policies that can command popular support.

Carbon pricing is no longer a niche economic policy — in fact it is fairly common. Its move towards the mainstream has taken place despite critics’ claims that it lacks political support: a lazy assumption based on high-profile outliers. In reality carbon pricing is thriving.

A total of 46 countries, including the entire EU, have implemented or scheduled carbon pricing programmes. Once China fully implements its carbon market next year, a fifth of global emissions will be covered by carbon pricing compared with less than 1 per cent in 2004. Argentina, South Africa and Singapore all launched carbon pricing this year….

Helen Mountford

Helen Mountford is the Vice President for Climate and Economics at WRI.

Helen previously worked as Deputy Director of Environment for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

She worked at OECD for over 16 years advising governments on policy reforms, and overseeing work on green fiscal reform, climate change finance and economics, fossil fuel subsidy reforms, green growth, water pricing, biodiversity incentive measures, and economy-environment outlooks and modelling.

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