Monitoring developments in the field of energy use and the environment

出 版 物：《OPEC Bulletin》 (OPEC Bull.)

年 卷 期：1996年第27卷第5期

页      面：12-35页

核心收录：

主　　题：Taxation 

摘      要：Following the third meeting of the Ad Hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate (AGBM), in Geneva, Switzerland, March 5-8, the convention s Executive Secretary, Michael Zammit Cutajar, told a press conference that most industrialised countries would not stabilise greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Cutajar said that industrialised countries needed to actively promote consumption patterns and energy-efficient technologies that reduced their per capita use of fossil fuels. Such an approach would create environmental space and enable developing countries to increase per capita consumption, he said. The Second Assessment Report, recently completed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1, was the subject of much debate at both the AGBM meeting and the meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA),2 held the previous week. Cutajar s observations were confirmed by comments in various quarters that CO2 emission abatement targets were unlikely to be met. For example, the Norwegian Parliament recently abandoned the target of stabilising the country s CO2 emissions at 1989 levels by the year 2000. The Government currently forecasts a 16 per cent increase in CO2 emissions over that period. There are also recent indications that the Austrian Government has come to the conclusion that the Toronto target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the 1988 level by 20 per cent in the year 2005 is unrealistic. There were many energy taxation developments in the first quarter of 1996 that were, at least, ostensibly linked to the environment. While Germany s third party, the leftist-ecologist Greens, called for a DM5 ecology tax on fuel, Anna Lindh, Sweden s Environment Minister, announced a decision to double a carbon tax first introduced in 1990. Meanwhile, renewed pleas were heard from environmental groups and pro-tax European Union (EU) states for a carbon/energy tax as part of an EU energy policy. A World Bank dele