Achieving U.S. Emissions Targets with a Carbon Tax provides insight on how incorporating emissions target mechanism into a strong national carbon tax can help ensure intended emission cuts are achieved. This mechanism establishes predictable ways of adapting the carbon pricing program over time to respond to any shortfall in emissions reductions. The report describes a basic two-step process– periodic evaluation of whether emissions reductions are on track to meet targets followed by an adjustment mechanism if reductions are less than anticipated.
This report highlights following points:
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are a cornerstone of the Paris Agreement on climate change. They set out the actions that countries plan to undertake to achieve the agreement’s objectives, focused on limiting the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2°C, ideally to 1.5 °C.
Renewable energy features prominently in most of these NDCs, confirming that the transition to a renewable energy future has come to be recognised globally as central to addressing climate change. Governments are well underway with implementing the first set of NDCs and will begin to review them in 2018. This entails taking stock of the adequacy of those NDCs to meet the objectives set out in the historic 2015 climate agreement. NDCs will be revised or updated by 2020, and every five years thereafter – with each revision aimed at being more ambitious than the previous one.