Personal Carbon Trading

Tina Fawcett, Yael Parag

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781849711968
• eBook ISBN: 9781136530111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze biologiche
• Subtopic: Ecologia

Personal carbon trading is rapidly moving up the political agenda as recognition grows of its potential to address urgent issues of climate change and natural resource use. Under personal carbon trading schemes a carbon allowance would be allocated to each individual, to be used and traded in the same way as in national and international carbon trading schemes.

This volume presents the latest research on personal carbon trading at different scales - from the effects on the individual, communities and organisations, to its place in national, EU (including the EU ETS) and global policy landscapes. It presents key research on the economic and policy barriers and implications, and will be essential reading for anyone involved in emissions trading research or policymaking.

■ research article

Personal carbon trading in different national contexts

TINA FAWCETT^*

Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, UK

Although personal carbon trading (PCT) is envisaged as a policy which could work in many developed countries, most research work has been undertaken in a UK context. Could the significant national variations in energy infrastructure, policy and patterns of personal carbon emissions diminish the viability and effectiveness of PCT outside the UK? This preliminary work has identified important national and regional variations in the EU and the USA, gathered together relevant data, and identified additional challenges for PCT not hitherto recognized within UK-focused research. A research agenda for internationalizing PCT research is proposed, which details the data, methodological development and future debates needed. Consideration of the appropriate geographical scale for implementing PCT suggests national rather than EU-level implementation within Europe, although subnational, state-based implementation may be relevant in the USA. While close attention must be paid to the interaction of PCT and individual national contexts, and detailed design of the policy is likely to vary between nations, the evidence suggests that PCT could be of relevance for many countries, not just the UK.

Keywords: equity, per-capita emissions, personal carbon trading, policy options

Bien que la politique d’séchange de carbone individuel « Personal Carbon Trading » (PCT) soit envisageable dans nombreux pays développés, la plupart des travaux de recherche ont été entrepris dans le contexte du Royaume-Uni. Ainsi, les importantes différences qui existent en infrastructure énergétique, en politique et en tendances en émissions individuelles de carbone pourraient-elles diminuer la viabilité et l’efficacité du PCT à l’extérieur du Royaume-Uni? Ce travail préliminaire a permis d’identifier d’simportantes différences nationales et régionales dans l’sUE et aux Etats-Unis, de rassembler des données pertinentes, et d’identifier des obstacles supplémentaires au PCT qui jusque-ici n’avaient pas été reconnus dans des travaux concentrés sur le Royaume-Uni. Un programme de recherche pour l’internationalisation des travaux sur le PCT est proposé, décrivant les besoins en matière de données, développements méthodologiques et débats futurs. L’séchelle géographique appropriée pour la mise en œuvre du PCT, serait, en Europe, celle des Etats plutôt que de TUE, et aux Etats-Unis, une mise en œuvre sous-nationale, au niveau des Etats, serait appropriée. Alors qu’sune attention particulière doit être portée à l’interaction du PCT au sein des différents contextes nationaux, et que la structure détaillée variera entre pays, les faits montrent que le PCT pourrait être applicable dans beaucoup d’autres pays hormis le Royaume-Uni.

Mots clés: echange de carbone individuel; émissions par habitant; équité; options de politiques

1. Introduction

This article was prompted in part by a Belgian colleague’ss remark that she wasn’st particularly surprised that personal carbon trading (PCT) has been developed as an idea in the UK, an island nation, as opposed to Belgium, where most people live within easy reach of an international border. It made me wonder whether the geography of a country is important in terms of PCT and, if so, why? More broadly, it prompted reflection on whether there are particular national characteristics, including geography, which would determine the applicability or attractiveness of PCT as an idea. Is there something special about the UK which has led to the idea being developed here, but which will prevent its wider spread?

Personal carbon trading is a policy idea whose aim is to reduce carbon emissions effectively, efficiently and equitably, using citizen engagement as one of the mechanisms to deliver change. While there are different versions of PCT (see Fawcett and Parag, 2010, for more details), the common features are that each individual is given a free tradable carbon allowance which covers the carbon emitted directly from their household energy use and/or personal transport. Individual allowances in PCT schemes do not cover the embodied carbon emissions in goods and services; only emissions from direct energy uses are included. Allowances would reduce over time in line with national emission reduction targets. Personal carbon trading is, in effect, a downstream capand-trade proposal. This idea has attracted political, academic and civil society interest in the UK in recent years, and been the subject of a government-sponsored ‘pre-feasibility’study. However, at present, PCT is in the development stage – with full details of its design, implementation, likely effects, costs and enforcement still being worked out. The UK government has no intention of introducing PCT at present, declaring it an idea that is ‘ahead of its time’(Defra, 2008a).¹ Most research and debate is confined to the UK (and undertaken within its policy, economic and social contexts) and, as a result, critical development of the concept is advancing more slowly than if wider international interest were engaged.

Two major strands of PCT thinking, ‘personal carbon rations’(or allowances) and ‘domestic tradable quotas’(now known as tradable energy quotas), were developed by independent researchers based in the UK (Fleming, 1997; Hillman, 1998). Their ideas have been further developed by teams of researchers in a number of UK-based centres, including the Universities of Oxford, Leeds, Loughborough, Manchester and Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Arts (which ran a 3-year programme on PCT) and the Institute for Public Policy Research (Fawcett, 2004; Starkey and Anderson, 2005; Bristow et al., 2008, Harwatt, 2008; Kerr and Battye, 2008; Parag, 2008; Prescott, 2008; Bird and Lockwood, 2009). There has been some work looking at how PCT might be applied in the USA (Hillman et al., 2008; Niemeier et al., 2008), a joint UK/Danish research study (Fawcett et al., 2009) and preliminary research from Sweden (Varnas and Nykvist, 2009). This work has uncovered some new issues which were not previously identified as being important. For example, the Danish research highlighted the complexities of accounting for carbon emissions where household energy is provided via combined heat and power systems. The challenge, therefore, is to conduct a more systematic review of the potential of PCT beyond the shores of the UK.

This article represents a preliminary look at factors which might interact with PCT in different countries. Further, it asks whether the nation state is the only scale at which PCT could or should be considered, or if it could work at an international or subnational scale. The case of PCT as a policy instrument can be seen as part of a wider set of arguments regarding the institutional arrangements that are likely to be most effective in combating climate change.

The article is structured as follows. Section 2 outlines a number of factors which might affect the salience of PCT in different national contexts. In Section 3, the possibility of introducing PCT at the EU level is considered, as are options for subnational introduction. These themes are brought together in the Discussion section (Section 4) and a research agenda for internationalizing PCT research is developed. Finally, conclusions are drawn.

While most of this article applies to PCT in general, some aspects are only of relevance to versions of PCT which cover emissions from personal air travel, as well as all other personal travel and household energy use, the best-known example of which is ‘personal carbon allowances’(Hillman and Fawcett, 2004).

2. PCT in different national contexts

The purpose of PCT is to provide a framework for significant and sustainable reductions in carbon emissions from direct personal energy use. Whether PCT can deliver such changes depends not only on its inherent characteristics but also on how it interacts with existing policies and economic, social and energy-use patterns. PCT would need to operate in substantially different energy and carbon emissions landscapes if it is to have international applicability. In this section, the energy and carbon emissions-related factors which seem most likely to influence whether and how PCT could be implemented, and how socially/politically acceptable it might be, are identified and discussed. These factors are split into three categories: general, household energy, and transport. There are other factors which would also have an important bearing on the relevance of PCT, including governance structures, policy-making environments, wider social policy, and national and international politics. One article in this special issue considers the political and policy barriers to the adoption of PCT (Parag and Eyre, 2010), while another considers the issues around regulation and enforcement (Eyre, 2010). What follows is therefore a partial analysis of the factors which may influence the relevance of PCT to different nations, focused on energy- and carbon-related issues.

2.1. General

Two questions which might affect the perception of PCT by national policy-makers are considered here:

1. How much more policy action is thought to be necessary in order to reduce carbon emissions?
2. How significant are personal carbon emissions as a proportion of the national total?

The salience of PCT should increase with increasing urgency for further emissions reduction, and the greater proportion of national emissions that it can tackle.

2.1.1. Progress with emissions reduction

Whether a country is in need of new policy ideas to deliver greater carbon emissions reductions in the medium-to-long term will influence its interest in PCT. Each country has different current per capita emissions, national targets, Kyoto commitments, and a range of existing and planned policies designed to reduce energy use and carbon emissions from the household and personal transport sectors. Some European countries are currently on ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Aims and scope
• EDITORIAL
• RESEARCH
• SYNTHESIS
• OUTLOOK