This inaugural lecture by professor Edwin Woerdman, pronounced on 26 March 2019 at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, contains various hypotheses. A national CO2 tax on top of the European emissions trading system will result in society paying more for emission reductions that could have been achieved more cheaply. Moreover, artificially raising the CO2 price ignores the rapidly falling costs of CO2-free energy technology. Finally, the desire of entrepreneurs for innovation profits based on such technology will play a greater role in the energy transition than the CO2 price.