Energy and environmental tax proposals in the recent Spanish white book on tax reform

BC3 Seminars
“Energy and environmental tax proposals in the recent Spanish white book on tax reform“

Prof. Xavier Labandeira (University of Vigo)

Abstract:

The ‘white book for the Spanish Tax Reform’ presented to the Ministry of Finance on March 2022 has proposed, among other tax changes, nineteen environmental taxation measures to improve the current design of the tax system in Spain. This seminar presents and explains the guidelines and key principles for implementing a green taxation reform in Spain as set by the white book, but in the context of the crises associated to the post-COVID and the Ukrainian war. The main purpose of the seminar is to provide the key messages to justify the use of taxation and its role to contribute to the ambitious mid-term Spanish environmental commitments. Nowadays, the most pressing environmental objectives should be integrated in the energy and climate change EU agenda under the so-called ‘Fit tor 55’ legislative package proposed by the European Commission in July 2021. Spain needs to promote electrification, to improve circular economy actions, to boost sustainable transports and better uses of natural resources, particularly water. To that aim environmental taxes should be taken into consideration as a crucial tool to further a sustainable economic development

About the Lecturer

I am a professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Vigo and belong to the research group Rede and to the Galician research center ECOBAS. I am also a director of Economics for Energy, a private research center that specializes in the analysis of energy issues and aims to create and transmit rigorous, neutral and useful knowledge to the different agents of Spanish society. I am research affliate of the CEEPR at the MIT. I have been collaborating with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the elaboration of its Fifth and SixthAssessment Reports (respectively released in 2014 and forthcoming in 2022). Moreover, between 2014 and 2017 I was the director of the Florence School of Regulation-Climate at the European University Institute in Florence. My research lies in the boundaries between climate, energy and public economics: my work has been published in leading academic journals and I regularly participate in conferences and workshops, I am member of the EAERE’s Policy Outreach Committee since 2018. Moreover, I was  a member of the Committee of Experts for the Reform of the Spanish Tax System to produce its white book (presented in March 2022). I was awarded with the Galician Academy of Sciences medal on research achievements in economics and social sciences in its first edition (2019).