FinSoul: British MP’s call for carbon tax to rescue EU cap-and-trade scheme.

Feb. 10, 2010 - PRLog -- FinSoul has learned of a major new report released recently by the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee, urging the government to consider the introduction of a carbon tax aimed at guaranteeing a minimum price for carbon on the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

There has been longstanding unhappiness by environmental and business groups who have regularly voiced the complaint that the low price of carbon after the recession and the lack of a legally binding global emissions pact have undermined the case for low carbon technology investment. They have added that the unavoidable fluctuations in the carbon price make it difficult for businesses to plan for infrastructure investments which will have a lifespan of several decades.

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) agreed that present mechanisms by which the carbon price is determined purely by supply and demand for emission allowances is flawed and has called for the UK government to look at measures that would ensure a fixed minimum carbon price, possibly a carbon tax, FinSoul believes.

"Emissions trading should be helping us to combat climate change, but at the moment the price of carbon simply isn't high enough to make it work," FinSoul understands the UK’s Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee as having said. "The recession has left many big firms with more carbon allowances than they need and carbon prices have collapsed. If the Government wants to kick-start serious green investment, it must step in to stop the price of carbon flat-lining."

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FinSoul structures and guides greenhouse gas emission reduction projects from beginning to end, working with both project developers and buyers of emission reduction credits.