The Chinese government has this week tempered optimism that the country could introduce a national carbon tax within the next four years, after a senior official insisted that a carbon levy was just one of a number of options being explored.
The past six months have seen a series of state media reports suggesting that the Chinese government is working on plans to introduce a national carbon tax, culminating in reports last week that a 10 yuan ($1.58) per tonne tax on emissions from large industrial firms could be launched before 2015.
However, speaking at an event hosted by the World Resources Institute in Washington this week, Su Wei, China’s chief negotiator on climate change, insisted that a carbon tax was just one of a series of policy options the government is looking at to help curb emissions.
“I think that the carbon tax is one of the instruments that can be used in order to direct low-carbon development,” he told reporters, but he advised that officials were currently exploring how any tax would need to be integrated with more advanced plans for regional and national emissions trading schemes which have already resulted in a number of city level trials.
“There may be some overlap between the two systems,” he said. “Of course, the two systems are not mutually exclusive. We need to have a very careful consideration.”
He also said any tax on emissions would have to be carefully tailored so as not to overly increase the tax burden on Chinese firms or overlap with other environmental taxes on fuel and natural resources such as the national resource tax launched late last year.
“Whether we call it a carbon tax – or environment tax or resource tax or even fuel tax – we have lots of taxes already,” Su said. “We need to carefully redesign the category and type.”
Su was in the US as part of a delegation investigating low carbon policy, which also met with US officials working on the country’s two regional emissions trading schemes: the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the Western Climate Initiative.
He also hinted at plans for a potentially significant new voluntary scheme for Chinese manufacturers that would allow them to place independently verified low carbon labels on products made in an environmentally sustainable manner.
