15.02.2017-
17.02.2017

The impacts of a progressive CO2 tax on socio-economic and environmental indicators in Austria

Main event: 10. Internationale Energiewirtschaftstagung "Klimaziele 2050: Chance für einen Paradigmenwechsel?"
Persons: Mark Sommer, Mathias Kirchner, Kurt Kratena
Language: Englisch
We analyse the economic and environmental impacts of different CO2 tax (uniform or progressive) and rebate (reduction of VAT, social contributions or lump-sum payments) schemes with focus on private consumption (i.e., heating and mobility) as well as distributional impacts on different household income quintiles in Austria. We use the econometric input-output model DYNK to investigate these impacts. DYNK is able to consider macroeconomic feedbacks of CO2 taxes and accompanying rebate schemes. An energy module allows to link production and consumption activities with energy demand and associated GHG emissions and includes behavioural estimations with regard to energy demand for private household income quintiles that are fully integrated in the macroeconomic part of the model. First preliminary results indicate that a uniform CO2 tax on fossil fuel use for private consumption (including a tax rebate on VAT for other commodities) has a weak regressive impact on household incomes. The distributional impact of CO2 taxes differs between heating and mobility consumption.