Company in Oz replaces lightbulbs with CFLs for free - makes money selling carbon credit
lowenergy.com.au
lowenergy.com.au
I guess this is like a super simple case study in carbon trading, pitfalls & all. How many credits should these guys be getting?
In my case, I probably would have replaced those bulbs anyway. In other cases, the incentive can be weirder. For one thing, There's a double jeopardy going on here. 1. Individual feel-goodness of the guy who traded in his bulbs 2. Individual feel-goodness via the carbon market.
Both are getting credit here. I feel like I'm lowering my emissions. But since those credits have been sold, someone else is emitting them in my place. They do the equivalent of taking my 100W bulb & plugging it into their wall with the fuzzy feeling that even thought they are emitting carbon, it is being offset. We are both claiming credit.
That's before the perverse incentives kick in. Why should I pay $8 X 10 to bulb my house with low watt bulbs when I can pay $0.50 X 10 to do so with cheap bulbs & call in these guys?
I know what you mean - but they will be paying to emit them, which will set up an economic basis in the long term.
Companies are compelled to do this in Australia (amongst others) due to our Kyoto targets, etc.
I feel like I am saving X watt hours & the purchaser does too. So they (the company) are trading in 2X watt hours "emotional credits" (the utility of this market) for 1x watt hour savings.
Of course, that's an exaggeration. I lost my drive & ability to save those emissions by replacing my bulbs, but it's not 100% certain that I would have done so anyway.
Companies are compelled to do this in Australia (amongst others) due to our Kyoto targets, etc.
Are they? I don't think they are directly. The Government is probably subsidising this & other efforts but there is no compulsion to purchase carbon credits. They Get bought by bus companies, airlines, etc. They are basically also riding on public sentiment.
You shouldn't get a warm fuzzy feeling. You're not reducing the total amount of CO2, you're just changing the allocation. However, both parties should feel good about the transaction because each party is economically better off than they were beforehand.
Makes you wonder if there are carbon credits in other areas (e.g. Computers, Data centres? Who knows).
Water is also a big issue in Australia. With the right legislation in place around water you might be able to do the same with water-saving measures.
You could even have the government manipulate prices by literally 'flooding' the market when necessary.
Sulfur Dioxide and catch shares for fisherman.
If the purpose was simply to reduce the amount of CO2 produced, then governments would agree to a common tax: x number of dollars per metric ton of CO2, period. Instead of that, the money transfer occurs between different entities. This rewards countries that aren't capable of significant CO2 creation, CO2 creation being a signal of a first-world, productive country.
I certainly don't suggest that it would be a global tax. Rather, a globally consistent tax. All money would stay within the given countries.