Energy | Technical Report
The Impact of Climate and Energy Policies on the Public Budget of EU Member States
01 March 2012
BY: Luis Olmos, RUESTER Sophia, SARTORI Martina, PAZIENZA Maria Grazia, Pippo Ranci, Jean-Michel Glachant, GALEOTTI Marzio, ZORN Annika(Editor)
In the current context, where public budgets are overstretched due to the economic crisis, there is a pressing need to understand the fiscal implications of climate policies. Policies intended to achieve decarbonization will impact both sides of a country’s budget via changes in the tax levels and composition of taxes on the one hand, as well as transfer payments and direct investments on the other. Back-of-the-envelope calculations – comparing net public revenues in 2020 for a Baseline and an Enhanced Policy scenario – show that the additional revenues from carbon pricing and the reduction in revenues from excise taxes on fossil fuels clearly dominate other direct and indirect effects of policies on public budgets such as the additional expenditures dedicated to RD&D targeting low-carbon technologies. The aggregated net budget impact of all direct and indirect effects of new climate policies implemented in the Enhanced Policy Scenario on public budgets in 2020 for the EU-27 as a whole – given our simplyfying assumptions – amounts to additional net public revenues of about €12.6bn (0.09% in terms of the EU-27 GDP) under medium-level abatement costs. This makes a non-negligible impact which is nevertheless much lower than the impact on public accounts from changes in main macroeconomic variables over time. Differences among Member States mainly depend on the additional revenues they will obtain from carbon pricing, which are driven by three main factors: the carbon intensity of the economy, which is positively correlated with the absolute value of the net budget impact of new policies; the share of non-ETS GHG emissions, which is positively correlated with the net budget impact; and the reduction in GHG emissions resulting from new policies, which is negatively correlated with this impact. Countries most significantly affected, both positively and negatively, are among the “new” Member States in the EU-27. In contrast, the impact of new climate policies on large EU-15 economies would be generally positive and typically in line with average EU values. Therefore, authorities from the EU-15 may consider the option of sharing the economic burden of the transition to a low-carbon economy among EU countries, taking into account their economic strength.
logo cadmus Read it on Cadmus Download in open access

LATEST FSR PUBLICATIONS

Other
Aviation is crucial for Europe's mobility, connectivity and competitiveness. With over 900 million air passengers travelling to, from and within the European Union each year, Europe makes up a third [...]
Technical Report
Lack of interoperability is increasingly becoming a significant issue in the electricity sector. The need to integrate a growing amount of distributed resources, such as renewable energy sources and electric [...]
Technical report
The energy transition calls for a rapid expansion of electricity grids at both transmission and distribution levels. Technological progress and digitalisation offer new solutions to system needs that can increase [...]
Technical report
The interaction of “Contracts”, “Markets” and “Law and Regulation” have informed the economic analysis of market economies for over 40 years. One of the main lessons learnt is that (contracts), [...]
Other
Rail transport and inland waterways are crucial to achieve the objectives outlined in the Green Deal agenda. These aims include a 55% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 and attaining [...]
Article
Urban mobility plays a key role for the promotion of the socio-economic development of a country. Particularly, MaaS platforms are important for those daily journeys made by travellers that must [...]

Join our community

To meet, discuss and learn in the channel that suits you best.

scroll

top