Carbon tax 'may not reduce CO2'

Article by Damian Kahya

When the government changed the terms of a new tax on the carbon emissions of large companies in last year's Spending Review, it was accused of hitting firms with a "green stealth tax".

Money raised through the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will now go to the government, rather than to those firms who cut their bills the most, as had been originally planned.

The business group, the CBI, is calling on the government to turn the tax back into an incentive-based scheme or scrap it altogether.

...But investors in green technology disagree.

James Cameron, founder of Climate Change Capital, says this is one of the best ways of reducing emissions in practice.

"What you are trying to do is, over time, take that whole commitment [to reduce carbon emissions]and apply it to individual areas. Lots of things are marginal but dealing with the built environment is not."

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Carbon tax 'may not reduce CO2'