Carbon taxes alone won't be enough to slow climate change and limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, according to a new study published in the journal Joule.
If the Paris Agreement target is to be met, researchers claim global carbon emissions must hit zero by 2070 and become negative afterwards, via carbon-capture technologies. But carbon taxes, on their own, won't be sufficient to shrink emissions to zero during the next half-century.
"The current system of penalizing greenhouse gas emissions through carbon taxes is not sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change, even if very high taxes are enforced," Habiba Daggash, a doctoral student in energy systems at Imperial College London, said in a news release. "Therefore, using this strategy alone, the Paris Agreement that most countries have committed to could not be delivered."
