Fuel for thought: everyone as a carbon trader
Matt Prescott, Co-Founder of The Robertsbridge Group
Matt is an environmental consultant and Co-Founder of The Robertsbridge Group. He specialises in sustainability in the built environment and its relationships with citizen action on climate change and proenvironmental behaviour. Matt is a Fellow of The Royal Geographical Society.
http:// www. robertsbridgegroup. com / Twitter- @ matt _ prescott _
Personal Carbon Trading
Imagine a mandatory system in which you receive a free allowance of carbon credits. You spend them every time you consume fuel, such as petrol or electricity, such as through lighting your home. Your balance of carbon credits rises and falls, just like money in a current account, as each month you receive your allowance and each month you continue to use carbon-rich energy. If you use more credits than you were given- if you go overdrawn, you would have to buy more. If you built a surplus of carbon credits, you could sell them.
You’ d trade these credits in a vast personal carbon trading exchange where the price, like in any market, would reflect supply and demand. The more in demand these carbon credits become, the higher their price, just as with any commodity. The higher the price, the greater the incentive to make lifestyle changes to reduce the carbon emissions you are responsible for – either to reduce the cost to you, or to make more profit. This is the core concept for personal carbon trading – a market mechanism involving everyone, and which would guarantee, through the allocation of credits, the total volume of carbon emissions which are permitted. A scheme involving everyone and employing traditional market economics. Is this the perfect climate change policy tool?
The devil in the detail
In a personal carbon trading scheme everyone would receive exactly the same allowance – at least this is how its architects imagined it. It would need the usual policy safeguards for vulnerable individuals, such as those living alone through no choice of their own in a draughty old house. How to account for children would need to be considered, and who would allocate the credits, and how? In fact very many details would need to be considered – and the devil, as always, lurks there. But for now let’ s just consider the pure concept. revolutionise. it 57