Environmental economists from five countries in Europe participate in a project coordinated from Denmark entitled COMETR, which will investigate the implications of environmental tax reforms for the competitiveness of industry. The environmental tax reforms in focus are those implemented in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Slovenia, Germany and UK during the 1990's. The purpose is to use a range of different econometric methods and macro-economic models to analyze the impacts. The project will provide policy support for European decision-makers with respect to the Energy Taxation Directive and the administration of the state aid rules on exemptions. A crucial component of the project are ex-post simulations on the macro-economic model E3ME of Cambridge Econometrics.

Prof. Mikael Skou Andersen of NERI's Department of Policy Analysis will coordinate the project, which runs from 2005 to 2007.

Read more about the project at the COMETR webpage

Final reports on "Competitiveness Effects of Environmental Tax Reforms" can be read here:

Published version of final report (Oxford University Press)

Competitiveness Effects of Environmental Tax Reforms - Annex to Final Report to the European Commission, DG Research and DG Taxation and Customs Union

Competitiveness Effects of Environmental Tax Reforms -Publishable Final Report to the European Commission, DG Research and DG Taxation and Customs Union (Summary report )