LONDON, Dec 18 Reuters Britain will implement a new carbon import levy on some products from 2027 to help to protect businesses against cheaper imports from countries with less strict climate policies, the government said on Monday.

The planned carbon border adjustment mechanism CBAM will apply to carbonintensive products in the iron, steel, aluminium, fertiliser, hydrogen, ceramics, glass and cement sectors.

The charge applied will depend on the amount of carbon emitted in the production of the imported good and any gap between the carbon price applied in the country of origin and the carbon price faced by UK producers.

This levy will make sure carbon intensive products from overseas like steel and ceramics face a comparable carbon price to those produced in the UK, so that our decarbonisation efforts translate into reductions in global emissions, finance minister Jeremy Hunt said.

Britain, which has a target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, launched an emissions trading system ETS in 2021 to charge power plants, factories and airlines for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit as part of efforts to meet that goal.

Many other regions such as the European Union and China operate such systems, but prices within the schemes vary and many regions have no carbon pricing at all.

Britain39;s benchmark ETS carbon contract currently trades around 36.60 pounds 46.34 per metric ton while contracts in China39;s ETS trade around 71.60 yuan 10.04 a ton.

Britain said…