Kawakatsu, Takeshi; Rudolph, Sven --- "Towards bottom-up carbon pricing in Canada" [2018] ELECD 644; in Hymel, Mona; Kreiser, Larry; Milne, E. Janet; Ashiabor, Hope (eds), "Innovation Addressing Climate Change Challenges" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 33

Book Title: Innovation Addressing Climate Change Challenges

Editor(s): Hymel, Mona; Kreiser, Larry; Milne, E. Janet; Ashiabor, Hope

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781788973359

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Towards bottom-up carbon pricing in Canada

Author(s): Kawakatsu, Takeshi; Rudolph, Sven

Number of pages: 17

Abstract/Description:

The Paris Agreement urgently needs underpinning by ambitious domestic policies. Greenhouse gas (GHG) pricing is still promising and has been spreading, but implementation barriers are still high. The US and Canada have shown that sub-national pricing is a viable alternative to national action. But, with the politics remaining unpredictable, Canada might rise to be the new leader in market-based climate policy from the bottom up. Against this background we analyze Canadian provinces’ approaches to GHG pricing. We use Sustainability Economics, Public Choice, New Environmental Federalism, and Polycentrism arguments as a basis and then study the British Columbia Carbon Tax and the Québec and Ontario Cap-and-Trade Programs. We mainly show that tailor-made sub-national GHG pricing is a viable strategy and that province programs are comparatively well designed and might even trigger national level action.