The proper way to slash carbon emissions is to tax carbon at the point of fuel extraction and let the market sort the problem out.
But because there’s no political appetite for carbon tax, we end up tinkering at the margins trying to address the emissions problem in tortuous and esoteric ways. Here’s a list I jotted down on the train on my way into the office:
- CERT
- SHESP
- CESP
- PAYS
- Decent Homes
- Allowable Solutions
- Part L
- RHI
- FiT
- CCL
- CRC
- ROCs
- Retrofit for the Future
- JESSICA, JASPERS, ELENA
- Expanded Suppliers Obligation
All of this cost and bureaucracy becomes redundant the moment the real price of carbon is reflected in the cost of energy. Is political expediency the biggest obstacle to carbon abatement?
carbon limited 
Hear hear! And pretty much what Tim Harford said at Ecobuild last week. Everyone *knows* this is the answer, yet politicians can’t sell it (even with an equal reduction in income tax etc) and there are many barriers/incentives which means those who influence policy are unlikely to be calling for this. Read Tim’s Logic of Life for a really clear explanation. I might even write a blog post (no promises).
Spot on, Casey!
The more nonsense we get thrown at us, the clearer it all becomes. There are now tens of thousands of people employed jumping through the various hoops placed in front of us and we all know, deep down, that it’s all nonsense. How depressing is that? If carbon was priced correctly, then it would sort itself out. We wouldn’t even need Part L.
But then we all know that carbon isn’t about to be priced correctly anytime soon.
Mark
Very sensible!
Re carbon pricing I’d suggest this is based on MAC rather than crystal ball gazing as to the cost of the impact of the emission of a tonne now in the future discounted back to today!
MAC is by no means insensitive to assumptions but at least it is tangible, what does it cost to avoid a tonne of CO2 and how many tonnes to we need to not emit.
Nick
The problem with MAC is there’s so much out there that is literally zero cost. Not the low hanging fruit but the fruit that’s lying on the ground as Steve Chu calls it.
Taxing upstream seems to be the only real way of doing things but I can see the political expediency in bringing that in slowly.
Totally agree that we’re drowning in an alphabet soup – and don’t get me started on the carbon trading – I always throw a bit of TLA (three letter acronym) bingo into my primer on carbon markets talk.
What’s MAC? (school dunce in the corner).
Phil – MAC is the marginal abatement cost, as in those lovely MAC curves that McKinsey produce. See this post for an interesting rundown. http://everythingischanging.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/how-much-would-it-cost-to-save-the-earth-i-dont-know-but-mckinsey-does/
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