Norway doubles carbon tax and boosts environment funding by $1.5 billion
Norway is doubling carbon tax on its North Sea oil industry and setting up a $1.5bn fund to tackle the impact of climate change in the Global South.
The Norwegian government has proposed increasing carbon tax on offshore oil companies from 200 Norwegian Krone (Nkr) per ton of CO2 ($35.04) to 410 Nkr ($71.84), along with a fishing industry tax of 50 Nkr tax ($8.76) per ton of carbon dioxide.
The country will also boost its funds for combating climate change by $1.5bn, as well as stepping up spending on forestry programs to $70.5 million and spending almost $11 million on carbon credits to help offset emissions, accelerate carbon neutral building regulations and push the adoption of electric vehicles.
These initiatives are some of the most radical yet for an oil-producing nation, and pose a strong political challenge to other countries, particularly the US, UK and Scottish governments, which have never supported a carbon tax on the oil and gas industries. Richard Dixon, director of World Wildlife Foundation in Scotland, commented: “Norway is showing how you can use oil income to fund the transition out of oil. We should be doing the same with UK oil revenues.”
