A Tale of Two Climate Policies: Political Economy of British Columbia’s Carbon Tax and Clean Electricity Standard

Abstract

In 2007–08, British Columbia implemented two significant climate policies: the first broadly based carbon tax and the first almost 100-percent “clean” electricity standard in North America. We describe the key design characteristics of these policies and analyse them against the criteria of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, economic efficiency, administrative feasibility, and public acceptance. We find that the clean electricity standard is estimated to reduce four to six times more emissions per year by 2020 than the carbon tax, but at an average cost per tonne of CO2 reduced that is significantly higher than the carbon tax at its current level. Interestingly, the clean electricity standard achieves higher and steadier levels of public acceptance, which might be attributed to its lack of visibility, relative to the carbon tax.