Prime Junta
RPGCodex' Little BRO
- Joined
- October 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540
Recently, someone in my neck of the woods floated an idea of extending the cap-and-trade carbon emissions thing right down to individual citizens. In other words, everyone would get a stack of carbon credits every year, and they'd get deducted when you buy gas, pay your electricity bill, buy fuel oil for heating, buy a plane ticket, bus ticket, train ticket, and what not. And, of course, you'd be free to sell any surplus credits you have on the open market as well as buy more if you're running out.
I kinda like the idea. This scheme would have an effect on my personal behavior.
Let's take a practical example. It's possible to have an electricity contract with the power utility, where you pay a bit more for "green electricity" -- i.e., power generated with hydropower, wind, solar, and what have you. The utility doesn't sell more of these "green power" contracts than it actually produces "green power," and it uses the extra money to develop more of it.
I haven't switched to this type of contract.
The reason is that electricity is fungible. If I buy "green" power, that means that I'm lowering demand for "brown" power, which causes downward pressure on its price. As long as there's a market for "brown" power, that means that someone will just be getting his "brown" power for less -- a big chunk of my extra payment will, effectively, subsidize someone else's "brown" power. I don't want that. Therefore, as incentives go, a "green" electricity contract isn't a very good one. It will only be a good one if the market genuinely shifts; if "brown" power becomes so unpopular that the utility will have to start dismantling capacity rather than simply selling it for a bit less.
However, if I was participating in this kind of cap-and-trade system, presumably "green" electricity would count for fewer carbon credits than "brown" electricity. Meaning, I'd have an economic incentive to switch to "green" electricity, along with lots of other people. This just might be enough to create a market situation where the electricity utility would have an actual incentive to build "green" power and dismantle "brown" power.
I can think of lots of little ways in which I could shrink my carbon footprint, but which are similarly ineffective if only a small part of the population does it. This kind of incentive scheme would push much larger groups of people into them.
IOW, on the whole I like the scheme a lot, although it's not without its problems. It might not be easy to make it work in practice. I can think of a few ways, though -- for example, have dual pricing for gas, fuel oil, air tickets, bus tickets, and what have you, with "non-carbon-credited" prices much higher than "carbon-credited" prices, and then issue everyone a "carbon card" they can flash to deduct the credits and thereby get the lower-priced version.
Another problem is loss of privacy -- collecting and collating the information on carbon credits would concentrate a lot of data about me in one place, which is not good. (This could be done in a way that this would be mitigated; for example, by making the carbon-credit deductions "anonymous," with information needed for verification only stored at the point where the deduction was made.)
Thoughts, suggestions, better ideas, anyone?
I'd prefer that this not devolve into a global-warming debate, though, so I'd respectfully request that those of us who believe, for whatever reason, that it's pointless even to try to cut our carbon emissions opt out of the discussion (if there is one).
I kinda like the idea. This scheme would have an effect on my personal behavior.
Let's take a practical example. It's possible to have an electricity contract with the power utility, where you pay a bit more for "green electricity" -- i.e., power generated with hydropower, wind, solar, and what have you. The utility doesn't sell more of these "green power" contracts than it actually produces "green power," and it uses the extra money to develop more of it.
I haven't switched to this type of contract.
The reason is that electricity is fungible. If I buy "green" power, that means that I'm lowering demand for "brown" power, which causes downward pressure on its price. As long as there's a market for "brown" power, that means that someone will just be getting his "brown" power for less -- a big chunk of my extra payment will, effectively, subsidize someone else's "brown" power. I don't want that. Therefore, as incentives go, a "green" electricity contract isn't a very good one. It will only be a good one if the market genuinely shifts; if "brown" power becomes so unpopular that the utility will have to start dismantling capacity rather than simply selling it for a bit less.
However, if I was participating in this kind of cap-and-trade system, presumably "green" electricity would count for fewer carbon credits than "brown" electricity. Meaning, I'd have an economic incentive to switch to "green" electricity, along with lots of other people. This just might be enough to create a market situation where the electricity utility would have an actual incentive to build "green" power and dismantle "brown" power.
I can think of lots of little ways in which I could shrink my carbon footprint, but which are similarly ineffective if only a small part of the population does it. This kind of incentive scheme would push much larger groups of people into them.
IOW, on the whole I like the scheme a lot, although it's not without its problems. It might not be easy to make it work in practice. I can think of a few ways, though -- for example, have dual pricing for gas, fuel oil, air tickets, bus tickets, and what have you, with "non-carbon-credited" prices much higher than "carbon-credited" prices, and then issue everyone a "carbon card" they can flash to deduct the credits and thereby get the lower-priced version.
Another problem is loss of privacy -- collecting and collating the information on carbon credits would concentrate a lot of data about me in one place, which is not good. (This could be done in a way that this would be mitigated; for example, by making the carbon-credit deductions "anonymous," with information needed for verification only stored at the point where the deduction was made.)
Thoughts, suggestions, better ideas, anyone?
I'd prefer that this not devolve into a global-warming debate, though, so I'd respectfully request that those of us who believe, for whatever reason, that it's pointless even to try to cut our carbon emissions opt out of the discussion (if there is one).
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540