World Carbon Pricing Database

The present dataset constitutes an extension of a dataset initially developed while pursuing my PhD within the Energy Policy Research Group at the University of Cambridge. Its existence owes much to its support as well as that of the Cambridge Judge Business School and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Its most recent update was supported by Resources for the Future.

This dataset contains information on carbon pricing mechanisms (carbon taxes or cap-and-trade) introduced around the world since 1990. To date, it is the most comprehensive attempt at providing a consistent-across-jurisdiction description of carbon pricing mechanisms in terms of their sectoral (and fuel) coverage as well as the associated price signal.

In a separate project, it is used in combination with greenhouse gas emissions data to calculate an emissions-weighted average carbon price. This project is hosted here: https://github.com/g-dolphin/ECP.

If this dataset has been useful to you or simply think it's cool, feel free to give it a ⭐!

Notice: As of May 30, 2026, all World Carbon Pricing Database data are available at worldcarbonpricing.org/developers. This repository no longer serves as a data distribution channel and will not be updated with new data releases.

Dataset

Description

The database records information on the sectoral scope and price associated with carbon pricing mechanisms, i.e. mechanisms creating an explicit price on CO2 emissions. This information is recorded at the sector-fuel level. The sectoral disaggregation of the economy follows the IPCC 2006 guidelines for national greenhouse gas emission inventories.

A key feature of this dataset is that it provides information structured by territorial jurisdiction, not carbon pricing mechanism. This is achieved by mapping information available for each carbon pricing mechanism onto jurisdictions. This mapping accounts for the possibility that multiple schemes apply to the same emissions sectors and, in such instances, presents information separately for each scheme. It also covers a long period of time (1990-2020) and, hence, allows to (re)construct time series of prices applied to emissions in the jurisdictions where such prices were in place. In addition, its disaggregation by IPCC 2006 sectors allows for a straightforward integration with several other data sources following the same sectoral disaggregation.

More details about the methodology supporting the construction of the dataset and the variables included in it are provided in the associated Data Descriptor available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01659-x.

Scope

• Jurisdictions: The dataset currently covers 198 national jurisdictions and 98 sub-national jurisdictions (50 US States, 13 Canadian Provinces and Territories, 3 Japanese Municipalities, 32 Chinese Provinces and Municipalities). It records their institutional development (sectoral and fuel coverage as well as price) from 1990 (year of introduction of the first carbon pricing mechanism in Finland) to this day (currently, 2018 is the last year for which data has been collected).

• Sectors: The dataset covers all IPCC source categories. A mapping between IPCC sector names, their associated codes, and corresponding International Energy Agency sector codes is available in the related ECP project.

• Greenhouse gases: the information currently in the dataset pertains exclusively to policy instruments targeting CO2 emissions. A future iteration will expand the dataset to other Kyoto gases that are subject to pricing mechanisms.

Repository files

This repository is the public distribution and transparency repository for WCPD.
It is organised around:

1. _dataset/data, which contains the released dataset .csv files.
2. _dataset/sources, which contains source citations and traceability tables for the released data points.
3. docs, which contains public documentation.

The production workspace used to curate and update raw inputs (including internal update tooling and source-ingestion pipelines) is maintained in a separate private repository.

Citation

If you use the dataset in scientific publication, please reference the following paper:

Dolphin, G., Xiahou, Q. World carbon pricing database: sources and methods. Sci Data 9, 573 (2022). The article is available in Open Access at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01659-x.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Contribution

The dataset is under continuous development. While every precaution has been taken to accurately record coverage and price information, the size of the undertaking has been such that some inaccuracies might remain. Contributions to its development and improvement as well as to update of existing records are welcome (and encouraged).

Principles for the selection of sources of information

Contributions to the dataset are greatly appreciated. Please bear in mind the following principles:

1. Updates to the dataset should be accurate and traceable. All proposed updates must provide a complete reference to the source of information.
2. Information is recorded at the lowest level of (IPCC) sectoral(-fuel) disaggregation:
   • Records at higher levels of aggregation are the result of aggregation of lower-level entries
3. No source of information is excluded from the set of admissible sources a priori. However:
   • pulicly available sources are preferred to sources subject to access restrictions;
   • 'higher quality' sources are preferred to 'lower quality' ones. For instance, official government legislation published in a jurisdiction's official journal will be prioritised over a third party report on the jurisdiction's policy.
   • to enhance the consistency of the dataset, sources offering standardized information on a larger set of jurisdictions are preferred to jurisdiction-specific sources.

Step-by-step guidance

All files under _dataset/data are released outputs.
Raw curation and production update workflows are managed in the private WCPD repository.
This public repository receives versioned released outputs and associated citation tables.

If you wish to contribute to the development of the dataset, please follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository to your local machine
2. Create a new (local) branch on which you will make your proposed changes
3. Save your files and commit your changes.
4. Push your branch to the remote repository.