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Climate, David Lisnard

Carbon price: Polluter pays, with total levies unchanged

Direction of change: change of another kind, or uncertain direction, compared with current law.

The lever. Price put on CO2 emissions: carbon tax, European carbon market, or their freeze or abolition. Direction rule: ↑ higher or broader carbon price.

« Pour donner un prix aux dommages infligés à la nature, il faut évaluer un coût à ces externalités négatives, pour facturer la pollution selon le principe pollueur-payeur. Beaucoup d’initiatives dans différents pays ont montré la pertinence de dispositifs en ce sens. Mais la fiscalité environnementale doit respecter trois règles : d’abord se faire à taxation totale constante, ensuite redistribuer les fruits de la taxation au bénéfice des « perdants » des nouvelles dispositions et aux acteurs vertueux qui contribuent à compenser ou amoindrir les pollutions, enfin préserver la compétitivité des entreprises. »1

Translation by the editorsTo put a price on the damage inflicted on nature, a cost must be assessed for these negative externalities, in order to charge for pollution according to the polluter-pays principle. Many initiatives in various countries have shown the relevance of schemes along these lines. But environmental taxation must respect three rules: first, be carried out at constant total taxation; second, redistribute the proceeds of taxation for the benefit of the “losers” of the new provisions and to virtuous actors who help offset or reduce pollution; finally, preserve the competitiveness of businesses.

Encoding

No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The programme does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

not costed

Principle (polluter pays with constant levies, redistribution) without rate or base: nothing to cost.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. The carbon component of excise duties on energy (formerly TICPE, TICGN, TICC) has been frozen at €44.6/tCO2 since 2018. The trajectory of the LFI 2018 (€55 in 2019, €86.2 in 2022) was abandoned after the gilets jaunes. The European ETS2 market (road fuels, buildings; Directive (EU) 2023/959) is postponed to 1 January 2028, with a price stability mechanism around €45/t (the ceiling is under revision in 2026).

Horizon. Gross revenue in a full year, without behavioural effects, excluding induced VAT and excluding compensation (energy cheque, etc.). Fossil energy volumes decline by 2032 (SNBC-3), so the lower bound is the most prudent for 2032.

Limits. The cost schedule is derived from I4CE figures and is not a recent official costing. High slope: raising the rate from €30.5/t to €44.6/t in 2018 was expected to bring in €2.7bn, i.e. about €0.19bn per €/t. Low slope: the 2017-2022 trajectory (€5.4bn at €30.5/t, €10.8bn planned at €86.2/t) gives about €0.097bn per €/t. Central value: average yield at €86.2/t, i.e. about €0.125bn per €/t. No official source from 2023 to 2026 isolates the current yield of the carbon component. Connaissance des énergies speaks of « avoisineraient 10 milliards » [“would be close to 10 billion”], without a source. The arrival of ETS2 in 2028 on the same base may lead to a reduction in the national component, which creates a risk of double counting. ETS2 revenue goes partly to the EU Social Climate Fund. The allocation of the revenue is read position by position: in most proposals, it funds redistribution. The return to the 2018 trajectory and abolition are given by the linear parameter.

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

This lever in the method · Costing for David Lisnard

  1. Nouvelle Énergie, programme « Générer un renouveau civique » (page non datée). Read the programme page.

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