New World Bank Group Carbon Pricing report shows initiatives insufficient to meet Paris objectives

The latest edition of the World Bank Group's State and Trends of Carbon Pricing report finds that while new carbon pricing initiatives continue to emerge, they remain insufficient to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement – both in terms emissions covered and price.

The new carbon initiatives outlined by World Bank Group were mostly at the subnational level and in the Americas. They include new carbon pricing initiatives in Canadian provinces and territories driven by Canada's federal carbon pricing approach.

At the national level, initiatives were launched in Argentina, South Africa and Singapore, while Colombia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Senegal, Ukraine and Vietnam were exploring new or complimentary policies.

According to the report, just 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are covered by regional, national and subnational carbon pricing initiatives, and less than 5 percent of these are currently priced at a level consistent with achieving the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement (estimated to be between US$40–80/tCO2 by 2020 and US$50–100/tCO2 by 2030).

The report, released on the final day of the 2019 Innovate4Climate conference in Singapore, also examines the critical role of implicit carbon pricing for the first time, which highlights the opportunities to design effective fiscal policies, like fossil fuel subsidies and fuel taxes that drive climate action.

Download the report here.