Conference Agenda

Under the pressure of the triple planetary crises (climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution increase), the use of voluntary instruments, soft instruments (e.g. education and information) and of regulatory (command & control) instruments does not seem sufficient to achieve the ambitious but necessary environmental targets that the scientific community, the global policy community and most Countries have given themselves.

Many economic instruments have been developed, but the share of environmental taxation remains low in most tax systems. Several questions emerge:

• • Are the experiences with ETR to date and the changing political environment should lead us to reconsider some elements of ETR - either tactically (i.e. with a view to increasing the probability of success) or fundamentally (i.e. some real re-considerations of the framework may be useful - approaches like focus on the investment side of things and policy packages.
  • Could policy-makers make more use of economic instruments (e.g. taxes with an environmental impact, environmental fees and charges, deposit/refund systems, removal of environmentally harmful subsidies and introduction of environmentally friendly subsidies, creation of markets like ETS and water rights)? Are international competitivity, potential regressive and social impacts, reduction of tax bases good reasons to avoid a significant shift of taxation from salaries and companies towards pollution, emissions and the use of natural resources?
  • If policymakers wish to help the poor and vulnerable citizens, or sectors exposed to international competition (say truck drivers and agriculture) should they do it by discounts on fossil fuel taxes? Do we have alternative instruments?
  • There is an increasing attention to energy poverty: but should policymakers be interested only (or with high priority) to energy poverty, or should they not consider also food poverty, water poverty, health poverty, housing poverty, …? i.e. general poverty, poverty "tout court", all forms of poverty together?
  • Energy taxation is considered too high in many countries; the increasing demand for energy by data centres and IA seems to be considered an independent variable; would demand be increasing so intensively if they had to pay the environmental and social costs, starting with climate change?
  • Can the restructuring of fiscal systems help to internalize environmental costs and recognize environmental values? Would this distort prices, markets and international trade, as some analysts propose? Would it reduce or increase effectiveness and efficiency of economic systems?
  • Should policymakers secure public revenue and strengthen energy security by reducing energy process and other taxes with a positive environmental impact?