Taxing external effects like pollution does nothing to ensure the taxes drive benefit toward the technology (renewables) the taxes were created to spur.
If you go looking for technology breakthrough by tax, you'll find nothing unless a particular technology breakthrough is able to be produced in said time and place. Which is why the approach doesn't inherently work, nothing guarantees a meaningful tech breakthrough is waiting in the wings, it might take 50 years for all you know.
On the negative effect side, by attaching the new pollution taxes, you're removing private capital that could have been put toward innovation.
Then to top it off, deciding how to measure and tax pollution and what should be or should not be defined as pollution, is rife with incredible disagreement (and that is not going to change). The games politicians start playing when you open that can of worms....
It's not in any way inherently a better way to go.
If you go looking for technology breakthrough by tax, you'll find nothing unless a particular technology breakthrough is able to be produced in said time and place. Which is why the approach doesn't inherently work, nothing guarantees a meaningful tech breakthrough is waiting in the wings, it might take 50 years for all you know.
On the negative effect side, by attaching the new pollution taxes, you're removing private capital that could have been put toward innovation.
Then to top it off, deciding how to measure and tax pollution and what should be or should not be defined as pollution, is rife with incredible disagreement (and that is not going to change). The games politicians start playing when you open that can of worms....
It's not in any way inherently a better way to go.