Political online game and economic simulation

It's a suggestion to improve - in my view - the emissions trading task and it concerns option 3 (excess taxation).

Currently it reads:
It would be less costly for consumers if we simply tax those emissions that exceed the limit and use this money for research on renewable energy. ...

I'd change it to:
It would be less costly for consumers if we simply tax (all/the) emissions and use this money for research on renewable energy. ...

Why? Emissions trading works with the cap idea while this is idea foreign to Lenkungssteuern (don't know the English term) such as environmental taxes (on fuel etc.) or health taxes (on tobacco, liquor etc.) which aim to internalise externalities. Thus there should not be a threshold of tax-free emissions but the tax should be applied to all emissions equally.

Please further elaborate, you advocate to merely change the verbiage? Or since the verbiage would be strengthen do you also seek to increase environmental benefit? Naturally such a task should carry immediate impacts to industry/economy since the cost of doing business would go up if producing emissions are now treated as an expense. Perhaps increase cost of living or something like that since this cost would be passed to the consumer.

The main difference is that taxing only excess emission does not give those emitters an incentive to reduce emissions, who do not exceed the cap while taxing all emissions would provide that incentive to everybody who emits. Whether it is more costly depends on the tax rate. Since the base of the tax - excess emissions vs all emissions - becomes broader, a lower tax rate is needed to generate the same revenue. Same tax rate would produce higher revenue. I can't tell you how this should/would affect parameters of the game since I don't know how the existing options affect them. Overall I would say that taxing all emissions with a lower tax rate (revenue neutral) would yield similar results environmentally while reducing distorting effects on the economy. Thus it would be a more efficient way of protecting the environment.