Fossil fuel producers and power plant operators.

A few states, and therefore a motivated group of Senators, would be hit disproportionately hard. Places like Wyoming and West Virginia drive a considerable part of their economy from coal, and fracking has led to natural gas windfalls in states like North Dakota.

You would imagine that some large carbon-intensive companies, like Koch or ExxonMobil, would also be impacted significantly.

EDIT: The counterpoint is that a gas tax in particular is quite regressive. The poor pay a larger portion of their income toward necessities like fuel to drive to work. They also are less likely to be able to afford that Tesla. Entry-level service workers can't work from home. They might be commuting large distances from cheaper outlying areas. There are many reasons why (if not managed properly) a carbon tax could hurt the wrong people.

It still seems like the right idea to me, though! We need to avoid calling it a 'tax' though, to avoid the Grover Norquist influence...

As usual, probably the poor & lower middle class unless the income tax reduction were explicitly directed to the lowest tax brackets to limit impact on working poor.

Those below the poverty line would see an increase in their energy costs at the pump and and home electric bills as energy producers raise rates to compensate (and the impoverished are the least able to convert their use, so will be the longest affected by the transition).

You could do a credit back from the proceeds.

The answer used to be "aluminum smelters" (aluminum, aka "frozen electricity").

Interestingly, the aluminum smelters in the mountains behind Portland closed down when the datacenters moved in and bought all the cheap hydro electricity they used to use.

My guess is that a tax increase on electricity will hit the Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft and other "cloud businesses" pretty hard...

Doubt it. If the price of electricity goes up 20%, the cost of computing goes up <20%. Sellers of computing pass that cost onto consumers.

I don't know anyone who would go out of business if their server bill went up 20%, especially if it went up the same for their competitors.

Aluminium smelters in Germany are actually getting a big subsidy. They're varying their electricity usage based upon the output of Germany's solar/wind farms and getting paid a hefty sum to do so (possibly too much).

This is having a negative impact on other smelters across the world.

Effectively they're doing the same job we were always told batteries would do.

If they're paying a fair amount for electricity, it's not a subsidy. And it's probably not a minute-timescale change like batteries. Energy storage and batteries are quite different things.

Microsoft already implements an internal carbon tax, so those sectors of Microsoft are already paying some amount for this.

I think they spend the money raised on efficiency and sourcing clean energy.

The big victims are the owners of fossil fuel deposits and infrastructure. Have a guess who is funding all the FUD about global warming.

Personally I think we should just buy the fossil fuel owners out at current market prices and shut them down as soon as possible. FUD in this area is just too effective to counter with logic or science so lets pay them off. If we wanted to be really clever we could do a 1 for 1 swap - Exxon we are buying your oil field and here is a wind farm in return.

You should stop casting these guys as villains, it obscures the main point of your argument. You would probably do the same lobbying if you were in their position. (Rather, if you were a major shareholder in Exxon, you would demand that managers do it.)

Just think of this in terms of Exxon &c having an effective negotiating position for blocking the carbon tax. We don't have to buy things at current market prices, but at a discount. Recognizing that there's room for negotiation is what everyone overlooks.

I didn't mean to cast Exxon and co as villains, just explain why. Yes I think we need to recognise that they have a very strong hand and deal with it head on. Trying to fight them will only mean we all lose.

The poor and lower middle class who effectively pay no income taxes already.

Electricity producing plants that burn cheap fossil fuels such as coal :)

People/companies that use more fossil fuels.