“We all understand we need to go way beyond the $5 mark” in order to really reduce carbon emissions, Dr. Montero said. However, he added, “I think this still allows you to start building the institutions that you need in the future, when you start moving forward toward more ambitious goals.”

Chile’s carbon tax was prompted by concerns about climate change, which is already expanding the nation’s deserts, according to Jorge Valverde Carbonell, an under secretary adviser in the Chilean Ministry of Finance. Asked if the tax could eventually be increased, Mr. Valverdesaid it was possible. However, he added that Chile’s contribution to the world’s greenhouse gas problem is small, and that countries that produce more emissions should take the lead.

Some warn that the tax will hurt Chile’s economy, including the energy-intensive mining sector, because electricity prices are already high and because few other nations are taxing carbon emissions. The tax “definitely reduces the competitiveness of our industry,” said Luis Felipe Arze, a partner at Carey & Allende, a Santiago-based law firm, who represents a spectrum of energy-related clients.

The carbon tax is the latest in a series of measures the Chilean government has implemented in an effort to move away from fossil fuels and encourage renewable energy sources, even as its electric power needs grow. Chile imports most of the natural gas, oil and coal that it uses but is rapidly building wind and solar farms. The nation has set a goal of getting 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. (The figure excludes large hydropower projects, an environmentally controversial power source that provided about one-third of Chile’s electricity in 2011.) What is billed as the largest solar plant in Latin America is going up in the Chilean desert.

With desert landscapes and winds generated by the Pacific Ocean and the towering Andes Mountains, “there is no restriction of availability of solar and wind in Chile,” said Andrés Pica Téllez, a professor in the department of industrial engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile who supports the tax. However, as renewable energy projects get built, the availability of transmission lines to move power will become an issue, he said.