Cap and Trade is different than carbon offsets, and it did work with sulfur oxides from coal plants. In that situation they put a cap on sulfur emissions related to the total carbon burned, then slowly lowered the cap. If you wanted a higher cap you had to trade for an emission amount with a company that dropped lower than their cap. In …
Cap and Trade is different than carbon offsets, and it did work with sulfur oxides from coal plants. In that situation they put a cap on sulfur emissions related to the total carbon burned, then slowly lowered the cap. If you wanted a higher cap you had to trade for an emission amount with a company that dropped lower than their cap. In this way they lowered the emissions through time. We have not done the same for carbon, at least not a clearly defined. The goal is to lower the total emissions as fast as possible, and so far the cap is not lower than the total emissions. To make this work you would have to cap a power company at emissions lower than they have at present, forcing them to get any additional power for their market from and alternative source. The weakness of this, as Lloyd points out, is the failure to account for embodied emissions in the new sources, and all of them have embodied emissions at this point.
This was meant as a reply to Alan Kandel, but I could not post it.
The idea of cap-and-trade is also, as the cap is tightened, the cost of energy would go up and thus the demand would go down of those energy sources. So, embodied emissions would show up as higher pricing of goods, lowering their usage.
Cap and Trade is different than carbon offsets, and it did work with sulfur oxides from coal plants. In that situation they put a cap on sulfur emissions related to the total carbon burned, then slowly lowered the cap. If you wanted a higher cap you had to trade for an emission amount with a company that dropped lower than their cap. In this way they lowered the emissions through time. We have not done the same for carbon, at least not a clearly defined. The goal is to lower the total emissions as fast as possible, and so far the cap is not lower than the total emissions. To make this work you would have to cap a power company at emissions lower than they have at present, forcing them to get any additional power for their market from and alternative source. The weakness of this, as Lloyd points out, is the failure to account for embodied emissions in the new sources, and all of them have embodied emissions at this point.
This was meant as a reply to Alan Kandel, but I could not post it.
The idea of cap-and-trade is also, as the cap is tightened, the cost of energy would go up and thus the demand would go down of those energy sources. So, embodied emissions would show up as higher pricing of goods, lowering their usage.