Carbon tax

The Washington department of Ecology sells carbon permits to companies who emit CO2 and in 2023 they started the Climate Commitment Act to use these funds to reduce CO2. In the past four years they have collected $4.3 billion dollars. They recently came out with a report stating they had reduced CO2 emissions by 7.5 million metric tons but that report was immediately challenged by experts. Upon examination an err was discovered in the calculation and the amount was actually 78,000 metric tons. Under normal circumstances it cost somewhere between $100 and $1,000 per ton to reduce CO2. Using the top number of $1,000 means that 78,000 tons would cost $78 million. Since the money collected was $4.3 billion, it begs the question, what happened to the other $4.2 billion. Is this another case of waste, fraud and abuse. Interestingly enough, if the original number of 7.5 million tons had been used it would be about $500 per ton which is with the accepted range. The Washington State Department of Commerce has submitted revised greenhouse gas emissions data to the Department of Ecology for projects funded by the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) during 2023-25. Due to a data entry error, Commerce reported that 7.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced as a result of eight rebate projects funded by the CCA that support home electrification and appliance rebates for low-income and vulnerable communities. The corrected data now estimates that 78,000 tons of emissions will be reduced over the lifetime of those projects. Many governments are pushing for carbon tax and these leaves some questions.