What if we all subscribed to a personal carbon cap? Carbon Limited puts this to the test with a new program that’s centered on a personal cap-and-trade social network.
Some of us are conscious of our respective carbon footprints. A smaller number knows what they mean in any sort of context, and fewer so realize the type of reductions it will take to combat climate change. There are hundreds of carbon calculators, complete with handy tips to reduce your emissions, and nearly as many ways to purchase carbon offsets. But we still don’t have a way to see and manage our footprint in real time with a target benchmark for where it should be and a community of others doing the same. A trial program in the UK is attempting to do just that.
Personal carbon trading is based on the concept that each citizen should be allocated an equal ‘carbon allowance’ as part of a ‘cap and trade’ scheme designed to control carbon emissions. The ‘cap’ (the total body of emissions allowed under the scheme) would initially be set at current emissions levels and gradually be reduced to meet the long-term carbon emission reduction goals. These carbon allowances, more likely to be called ’carbon credits’, would be issued at no cost to individuals and surrendered electronically when purchasing fuel and electricity. People using less than their share could sell the surplus to people or businesses using more than their allotted share, via a market. In this way, it would provide an incentive for every individual to take steps to reduce their ‘personal emissions’, in other words, the emissions for which they are directly responsible.
In other words, your personal emissions are capped and tracked. If you emit less, you can sell the balance to someone who emits more. If you emit more, you have to buy credits from someone who emits less. Everyone is treated fairly and equally. So every time Bill Gates or some other celebrity boards a private jet, the excess carbon that that flight produces will have to be purchased from someone who emits less than the universally capped level at a cost of approximately $47/ton by today’s rates. So instead of purchasing carbon offsets from a company, as one might do today, the cash will go to someone who is actually living below the cap.
The Carbon Limited system is being administered by the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts (RSA). According to the Guardian, “The RSA says each volunteer in the trial will be allocated credits representing five tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum. This total equals roughly half the total lifestyle-related carbon emissions of the average UK citizen, but is meant to be illustrative of the kind of emissions reductions the UK government says each citizen needs to achieve in coming decades to prevent ‘dangerous climate change’.”
For the initial trial, volunteers will have their fuel purchases tracked through a loyalty card, which will “record how much fuel they have purchased – and, as a result, create an electronic record of how much carbon dioxide they will consequently be emitting into the atmosphere. Each volunteer will be given a monthly allowance of carbon credits which they will then be able to trade with other volunteers using an online trading system dubbed the CarbonDAQ. Volunteers who are thrifty with their credits will, using a virtual currency, be able to sell their spare credits to those needing to drive further than their allowance allows.”
The website is designed as a community with a real-time market for trading credits, though it’s all virtual at this point. A section is devoted to ways to change your lifestyle to reduce your emissions, and you can join or form social-network-like groups to get additional support and exchange information. It is clearly driven by the nexus of social media and green living.
You have to reside in the UK to participate.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Jason Welker // Jun 9, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Sounds like a wonderful system… but how will it ever work on a large scale? Will it always be voluntary or is it possible such a scheme could become mandatory on a national or international level? If so, just imagine the bureaucracy needed to track the emissions of all citizens.
Additionally, our consumption of fuel for driving represents only a small portion of our total carbon footprint. Will the scheme account for our use of plastics, the size of our homes and the heating fuel consumed, the amount of electricity we consume, our diets (fossil fuel, petro-chemical laden meat products vs. organic vegetarians). I see how tracking fuel purchases on a credit card allow for transportation to be monitored, but what about the rest of our lifestyle choices that affect our individual carbon footprints?
If I were to join this scheme, I’d buy a nice bike, ride it everywhere, and sell my credits to the lazier folks who rely on their cars. Thanks for sharing, I hope such a scheme finds a foothold in other countries. It’s easy for citizens to point their fingers at big polluting industries, but we forget that around half of all CO2 emissions come from individual households, not big corporations. If a cap and trade system is to be applied to business, why shouldn’t it be applied to individuals?
2 Nick DiGiacomo // Jun 9, 2008 at 7:49 pm
As admirable as this might seem, it a) falls squarely into the “personal virtue” bucket – i.e. things that make us individually feel good (and superior – Smug Alert, anyone?), and b) relies on the sleight-of-hand zero-sum game called carbon trading.
But the global dimensionsof climate change requires actual reductions on a similar (i.e. global) scale. Like it or not, the impact of voluntary carbon trading programs absolutely pales in comparison to the leverage that large retailers and manufacturers (and ultimately governments) have when they introduce incremental improvements to the mass market. Wal-Mart increasing the efficiency of the light bulbs it sells, or HP and Best Buy instituting company-wide electronics recycling may not be as sexy as personal carbon trading , but they are much more effective at actually reducing carbon emissions on a scale large enough to matter.
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