This article provides an overview of specific and systemic applications of energy taxes and environmental(or green) tax reforms. To do so it combines a theoretical and empirical assessment of the literature, with anon-exhaustive description of the practice of these instruments and packages in the real world. Besidesyielding a comprehensive approximation to the specific and systemic use of energy taxes, the paper con-tributes to the research in this area by reflecting on the present and future of these instruments in a particu-larly shifting world.