–Reporting by Mathew Carr

Global carbon price should reach $187 by 2030: Solberg

A global carbon tax should reach the equivalent of $187 a ton by 2030, said Erna Solberg, Norway’s former prime minister.

Prices in the EU are currently at about 83 euros ($89).

The world needs tax reform, Solberg told the Economist Impact conference Wednesday. Emerging countries need to tax their rich people more, as do wealthy countries, she said.

The U.S. has travelled down the wrong road with its Inflation Reduction Act, because it made the climate transition about boosting corporate welfare, which poorer nations can’t afford to deploy, she signalled.

Instead of competing to cut heat-trapping emissions, the world is now competing to offer subsidies, Solberg said.

“Instead of pricing the externality, it means [countries] need to use money to compete against each other, to have this industrial change — money that we should have needed for education, for healthcare, for …other things. I think that it’s a great step that they [the US] are moving forward … on climate, but the industrial part of this is to make competition more difficult for other countries. It will maybe end up with a race on subsidies that only the rich countries can afford.”

On global climate action:

“Mostly it’s the US that has not delivered what it promised,” she said.

Norway can’t rely on oil and gas and polluters need to pay more everywhere: former PM