A new tool was launched to control the polluting emissions of companies to the environment. This is Ecotax, created to define emissions targets taking into account the particularity of each building.
The system was created by researchers from the Department of Mathematics Applied to Information Technologies of the ETSI of Telecommunications of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. According to its creators, it is an economic policy instrument conceived as a system of incentives and taxes that provides a fair and transparent allocation of responsibility for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the construction sector.
As explained by the ETSI, the tool is adapted to the objectives and commitments of emission reduction of each country and, depending on the fulfillment of the objective, the buildings will have benefits or penalties: if a building is efficient it will have a subsidy, while if it is inefficient it will be taxed.
This is how the system is self-financing without the need to make any public investment and with an added benefit: if a nation achieves a positive total balance it will receive an inflow of funds from the European Trading System, the European market for buying and selling emission rights.
Europe is one of the continents that has bet the strongest on energy efficiency with high commitments such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and increasing energy efficiency by 20% by 2020. Therefore, Latin America is expected to be in line with these goals.
