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The West could prevent emissions arbitrage with CO2 tariffs on imports set at the same cost per ton as the domestic carbon tax. Something like: goods produced a

The West could prevent emissions arbitrage with CO2 tariffs on imports set at the same cost per ton as the domestic carbon tax. Something like: goods produced abroad need to have a CO2 audit chain with proven integrity for imported goods to be CO2-taxed at the manufacturer's claimed emissions intensity. Otherwise the importing country assumes an unfavorable (high) default CO2 intensity for goods produced abroad and taxes are high. That wouldn't necessarily prevent high emissions linked to domestic-only consumption-and-production in China, India, and other developing nations, but it would be a powerful incentive as long as those countries have a lot of trade with the developed world. And it would probably tend to make developing nations' domestic-production-for-domestic-consumption activity cleaner by accelerating adoption (and pushing down costs) of lower-carbon technologies starting in export driven industries.

ars 10y ago
That wouldn't help. You can't "target" energy that way because it is fungible. The country would claim "all exports are made from the renewable energy, and all hydrocarbon energy is used for internal consumption". I suppose you could set import tariffs based on the entire country's energy balance, but then you disincentive any individual producer from doing anything. On top of that you can "wash" energy. Make solar cells using hydrocarbon energy, then import them to another country and claim "see, we are all solar" - but of course they aren't since the energy used just came from a different country. As free market perfect as it seem, a CO2 tax is impossible in the details unless it was truly global (which would never work since the incentive for a country to cheap is enormous).