August 08, 2026 What we pay for something in a shop often doesn’t reflect its true cost. Producing goods causes damage through carbon emissions that drive climate change, but the receipts for that damage rarely show up in the price. The costs are often hidden and diffuse, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. One way to make people pay the full cost is to introduce a carbon price. This can take the form of a carbon tax or a trading system, which caps emissions and lets companies buy and sell permits. Many countries now do this. Around 30% of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions have a carbon price. In the chart, you can see that this has doubled in the last decade. The biggest part of this rise came from China’s introduction of a trading system in its electricity sector. While more and more of the world’s production has a carbon price, most prices are incredibly low. In a