South Africa aims to publish draft regulations in late April establishing which domestic offset types can be used to comply with the country’s planned carbon tax.

The draft will establish what offset standards – such as the UN’s CDM, Gold Standard or the VCS – will be eligible, as well as a list of project types that emitters are entitled to use, according to Cecil Morden, a senior official in South Africa’s finance ministry.

The publication of the draft rules will be followed by a consultation of several weeks, before the government refines the regulations further, Morden told Carbon Pulse on the sidelines of the World Bank’s Carbon pricing: sustaining the momentum event in Zurich on Tuesday.

The government is still revising its draft carbon tax bill tabled last November to take into account the more than 100 submissions received through a separate consultation.

The draft bill set out an initial tax rate of R120 ($7.71) per tonne of CO2 and covered all sectors of the economy except waste management and forestry and land-use, which the government said should be exempt for the first phase due to “measurement difficulties”.

The bill has provisions that could mean emitters get exemptions of up to 95%, and it allows them to buy domestic offsets instead of paying the tax.

The South African government is still aiming to have the tax in place from Jan. 1, 2017.

By Ben Garside – ben@carbon-pulse.com