Environmental Taxation Assessment on Clean Technologies Reducing Carbon Emissions Cost-Effectively

Abstract

Anthropogenic emissions increase the concentration of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, which necessitates the promotion of environmental protection as one of the most urgent tasks of European environmental policy. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the development of clean technologies in production also depends on the impact of environmental taxation; in this regard, a methodology for analyzing its impact and assessment on the development of eco-friendly technologies is proposed. An analysis of environmental tax revenues to the budgets of the EU countries revealed the insufficiency of environmental revenues to cover the costs of environmental protection from the damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions, which requires the transformation of the system of fiscal mechanisms. The total receipts of all environmental taxes in the EU budget for the period 2000–2020 increased by 53%, and the receipts from taxes on greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere increased by 71% in the EU budget, with a tax rate increase of 1.5-fold over this period. The application of the proposed methodology made it possible to determine, on the basis of the correlation coefficient, a high connection strength of +0.971 for the period 2000–2020 between the receipts of the environmental tax for greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and the total values of all environmental taxes, as well as a fairly strong feedback of +0.913 from the receipts of the environmental tax to the EU budget with gross domestic product. Therefore, it is proposed to use differentiated environmental tax rates for different stages of the development of clean technologies.