A report by the World Bank has indicated that governments from across the world raised about USD33bn in carbon pricing revenue last year.

The amount represented a 50 percent increase over the USD22 billion accruals from the source in 2016.

The World Bank in its latest ‘Annual State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2018 Report’, launched at the Innovate4Climate conference in Frankfurt, Germany on May 22, disclosed that the implementation of carbon pricing initiatives had tripled over the last decade.

The Bank reported that currently 70 jurisdictions had implemented, or were scheduled to implement the carbon pricing initiatives, including 45 at national and 25 at sub-national levels.

It noted that the fiscal mechanisms assisted governments to generate the carbon pricing revenues from allowance auctions, direct payments to meet compliance obligations, and carbon tax receipts.

The report also reflected that the recent expansion of carbon pricing schemes had been driven largely by new initiatives in the Americas, including in Chile and Colombia, and in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario, and in the US states of Massachusetts, California and Washington.

In addition, the Bank disclosed further that the December 2017 announcement by the Chinese Government on its proposed plan to phase in an emissions trading scheme starting with the power sector was also significant.

The report projected that if the implementation of the Chinese ETS operational, carbon pricing mechanisms around the world would cover 11 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent, or about 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, up from 15 percent in 2017.

The World Bank report indicated that carbon prices were rising, with about half of emissions estimated at over USD10 per tonne of CO2 equivalent now covered by carbon pricing initiatives, compared to one-quarter of emissions covered in the last report.