Green Taxes and their Impact on Romanian’s Economy compared to Investments for Air and Climate Protection

Climate changes are more and more evident and their effect is increasingly extensive, and in the current context the environmental taxes may become a key factor in ensuring the sustainable development for the entire society. This article presents a medium-term analysis of the main categories of environmental taxes, their evolution compared to the investments for air and climate protection, as a percentage of GDP, made in Romania. Four main categories of environmental taxes: energy taxes (including transport fuels); transport taxes (excluding transport fuels); pollution taxes and resource taxes are collected in Romania, yearly. The data used in this study provides from the National Institute of Statistics. During 2006-2020, in Romania the highest percentage is represented by energy taxes 88%, in second place are taxes for transports 10% and in the third and fourth places with insignificant percentages (about 1%) are the taxes for resources and for pollution. From the four categories of environmental taxes, it can be seen that resource taxes have a decreasing trend from 51.6 million euros in 2006 to 3.84 million euros in 2020, while energy taxes, transport taxes and pollution taxes have an increasing trend. Keywords: climate changes, environmental taxes, sustainable development, air and climate protection