The Valencian climate change law will tax large surfaces for the number of cars that access them

The future Law on Climate Change and Ecological Transition will introduce three new tax burdens in the Valencian Community within the green taxation, for polluting vehicles, for large generating surfaces of great mobility and for the emission of greenhouse gases. For example, the Generalitat will tax large areas of more than 2,500 square meters for the number of vehicles that access the space, to compensate for their emissions.

The collection of green taxation will go to a finalist fund, that is, it will revert to the scope of the law itself, in order to “accompany” economic sectors and people in that ecological transition so that it is “a just transition”, as explained this afternoon by the Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development, Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition, Mireia Mollà, when presenting the draft law approved by the Consell. Mollà has highlighted the great participation in the elaboration of the text, which has assumed 730 allegations, and comes to transpose and adapt European regulations and, in some cases, the objectives are more ambitious. The preliminary draft must go through the Consell Jurídic Consultiu, among other bodies, before reaching the Valencian Parliament.

The tax on the most polluting vehicles will be applied from 2023 in order to discourage their purchase, and will be applied at the rate of weight and gram of CO₂ emitted by the vehicle. This means advancing in the challenge that from 2040 no registration can be of polluting vehicles.

The Minister has stressed, like the normative text, the need to act urgently to face the tropicalization of the Mediterranean, the loss of biodiversity and the intensification of meteorological phenomena with a priority objective: to guarantee the conditions of life and progress in a territory that will be the epicenter of climate change.

The Mediterranean is the basin most affected by climate change in Europe: tropical nights above 20 degrees and equatorial nights, above 25 degrees, have gone from 20 to 70 a year since the eighties. The Valencian Community is one of the autonomies most affected in Spain by climate change. Therefore, in some cases the objectives are more ambitious than those provided for in the state regulation and “are accompanied by the necessary instruments to protect the groups, economic sectors and the most vulnerable areas in the process of ecological transition,” according to the ministry.

The Climate Change Law sets as an objective, in accordance with the lines set by the European Union, to reduce CO₂ emissions by 40% in 2030 and declare emissions neutrality in 2050. The state standard puts the percentage at 23%. In terms of energy consumption, the target is set at a reduction of 35.4% in 2030 (35% in the national standard) and it is set as a target that 42% of the energy consumed in 2030 is from renewable sources.

The draft also promotes the implementation of economic activities and the creation of green jobs and the promotion of environmental education. The standard is set in the characteristics of the Valencian territory in terms of consumption, fuels, natural resources and opportunities available to define adapted strategies to combat global warming around four axes: Energy, Urbanism and Territory, Mobility and Green Taxation,

In Energy, Efficiency, Saving and Expansion of Renewables are the three strategies to achieve the percentages of renewable origin of energy from the planning and democratization of clean energy, This will have the impulse of the Master Plan of Renewable Energies of the Ministry of Ecological Transition.

To comply with the binding purposes, the Ministry is endowed with an Integrated Energy and Climate Change Plan, already in tender, an instrument, integrated and transversal, of management and planning of the sectoral objectives and of the specific actions that will be developed to respond to the purposes of this law.

In reference to the actions of the Territory, the proposed Law refers to the establishment of priority development zones, in collaboration with the City Councils, or to the right of surface, “two mechanisms dedicated to simplifying the implementation of projects promoted by cooperatives, local energy communities or even local corporations,” says the text of the Ministry.

Source: The Country