Talk:Emissions trading

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Developing countries profiting

The article states that under the Kyoto Protocol countries such as China and India would profit from the sale of emissions credits -- this isn't accurate since credits aren't given to developing countries under Kyoto because those countries aren't required to reduce their emissions.

Much good info on emission trading under Kyoto: http://unfccc.int/kyoto_mechanisms/emissions_trading/items/2731.php Thinksinpictures 07:14, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

- But they can profit (at the United States' expense) through the protocol's CDM (Clean Development Mechanism). 68.164.87.228 01:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

false claims

It is not true that emissions trading "doesn't harm industrial concerns", unless we are comparing emissions trading to traditional regulation. When we impose a pollution cap, we induce firms to undertake costly emissions-reducing procedures. No free lunches. Neither is it true that environmental groups can hoard credits without imposing the same sort of cost, for hoarding credits is just a way to lower the emissions cap.

A counter claim (Developed by Paul Hawken in "The Ecology of Commerce" is that because "dumping carbon into the atmosphere" has been essentially "cost free" at present, it has harmed industrial concerns by increasing costs to future generations, our communities and the non-human environmental services. As such, not having a cost for carbon dumped into the Atmosphere represents a "hidden subsidy" from those who will pay the costs to those who haven't paid - and as Sir Nicholas Stern said in the Stern Report, represents the greatest market failure in history. John D. Croft 12:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

The notion that emission of carbon "has harmed industrial concerns by increasing costs to future generations" is unscientific rubbish typical of this way of thinking. No link has ever been established between the emission of carbon gases and anything in the future that might need remedial action of any kind. It is simply fashionable posturing amongst modern socialists and guilt-mongers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.20.129.40 (talk) 02:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Move to strike the above comment on "unscientific rubbish" due to biased language and lack of signtature Pbmax (talk) 17:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Harmful to business

Emission trading schemes are a disaster to small businesses, and the rule of law. They force businesses to compete to buy 'pollution permits', with the obvious results that only the largest businesses can obtain these permits. Furthermore, emission trading essentially allows companies to exempt themselves from pollution laws if they pay can afford to pay a certain fee.

Poor, poor companies. So should we forgo clean, healthy air for the sake of business? If your answer is yes, you need to work on your priorities.12.169.83.234 (talk) 19:27, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

In the EU ETS only large companies are covered. Therefore the kind of harm for SMEs you are talking about is avoided. (TimS TimS (talk) 15:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC))

No fair trading

Developing countries have for sure way less money to be spent in reducing gases emissions:only rich countries will be able to successfully stay below the set limits and "sell" emission credits to others. Money can buy extra freedom in not following the rules...once again...am i wrong?

You're absolutely wrong. The entire purpose of emissions trading is to transfer money from productive (ie rich) countries to unproductive (ie poor) countries. Imagine a situation in which Mr. X drives his car 50 miles to work every day, but Mr. Y is unemployed. Mr. Y could then accuse Mr. X of destroying the environment by driving his car. But the oh-so righteous (but poor) Mr Y could "trade" him some emissions credits, for a price. Same exact thing. Countries like Ghana/Sudan/Bolivia/Afghanistan, which have few factories, will receive redistributions of cash from countries like the US and Japan. User:141.151.160.231

Any 'transfer' of resources is incidental, not the purpose. The purpose of emission trading, generally, is simply to reduce emissions as cheaply as possible. The CDM as you may allude to, has as one of its purposes to transfer technology to developing countries, but that's a special case of emissions trading. Jens Nielsen 14:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Eh. Read the article. It's just the spectre of communism with a new reason to live.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.20.122.160 (talk • contribs) .

This kind of polemic has no place in the development of an encyclopedia. It is a right wing POV that runs counter to the purposes of balance needed for Wikipedia. John D. Croft 07:11, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Labeling an opinion "right-wing" does not mean it has no place in a discussion, any more than labeling another opinion "left-wing" would bar it from discussion. In neither case does the opinion "run counter to the purposes of balance." I'd say you need to reconsider what "balance" means.Alcuin of York (talk) 22:04, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you are wrong. Developing countries can stand to benefit from a carbon trading regime. First and formost since few developing countries actually pollute anywhere near as much as the first world, small investments into infrastructure can yield what are known as CERs, Carbon Emissions Reductions, credits the same as the EU's EUAs. This would allow the developing countries to sell the carbon credits to raise much needed hard currency. Now where the currency goes after the government leaders get their hands on it. . . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.21.105.214 (talk) 11:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Id hate to bitch-slap you but small countries that are poor cant use non polluting power so try getting-back to reality now. Yyou are absolutely clueless on how the poor countries power themselves. Almost no poor country can afford to maintain green power due to the lack of money in their native economies. 68.70.6.169 (talk) 12:29, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

any 'revenue neutral' approach, will fail

the current European system is bumbleing along, because nobody is being pinched, every company has enough credits. as soon as somebody has to pay,the arbitrary giveaway system will fail. The only system that will work, will be an auction system, with the aoction price being much like a tax. The tax will hit electrical production, especially harrd. The tax, will become a political issue.--CorvetteZ51 10:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

pros/cons of enforcement regimes

I find this description of the relative merits of centralized v. 3rd party enforcement regimes very unhelpful. I can't see why all of the objections to centralized enforcement wouldn't be applicable to third party audits (why are third party audits cheaper than having the government do it directly? surely somebody has to pay? why are 3rd party auditors incorruptible but government auditors aren't?) but the paragraph seems to strongly imply that 3rd party auditing is superior. Am I reading this wrong or do other people have the same objection?

I agree with you. The enforcement section should simply indicate that enforcement is critical and that transparency is important. References should be provided for any statement that is stronger than that. Who's going to do the rewrite?

people are missing the point of the merits of 1st v. 3rd party enforcement, the point is, with third party, the gov't hires less people, so it looks like the costs of the progran is less. Of course, the 'third party employees' don't work for nothing, so they charge industry for their expenses.Ie, an additional burden on industry.CorvetteZ51 05:37, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

allocation of permits

the needs to be more discussion on how permits get allocated. Keep in mind that giving away permits, is the same as giving away money. In the EU ETS, enough permits are being given away, so nobody has to cut back on carbon.CorvetteZ51 05:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Certainly the markets are providing a 'soft landing,' but 2006 credits are trading for over 10 Euros and 2008 credits, when the market begins to have more bite, for over 15. Compare that to a market where there really is no obligation, the Chicago Climate Exchange, where credits are selling for $4. RichWoodward 13:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

credits trading at 6.5 euros, as od 21Dec-2006.CorvetteZ51 12:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

credits trading at 4.70 Euros, 5-Jan-07, there is no logical way to give credits away. CorvetteZ51 10:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

18-May-07 update, credits trading at 0.30 Euro CorvetteZ51 10:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

18-May-07 update, according to prices posted by http://www.evomarkets.com/ 2008 credits are trading at 21.7 Euro and 2009 credits are trading at 22 Euros. Pay attention to the markets that actually have some legitimate standing. There is a fundamental difference between the 2007 market and the years that follow. As I recall 2007 was not binding in the EU and surplus credits in 2007 could not be used in later years, meaning that the price of 2007 credits is not representative of the market fundametals. As I recall, surplus credits from later years can be rolled over, meaning that those prices will almost certainly not collapse. RichWoodward 18:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The existence of trading, does not imply the soundness of the underlying activity. With that said, is there a way to find out who gets permits? Is the system transparent for outsiders, or is it some kimd of secret deal?CorvetteZ51

I don't know how transparent the trading is. Market credibility could be aided by transparency, but it's not the only way to ensure that. If there is sufficient government oversight, then the market will trade real obligations. You suggest above that there's excess supply. But if that were the case the price would be zero -- who would pay for these credits if there's an a abundance of them? RichWoodward 13:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

is anybody stupid enough to think, that this scam will work? C'mon folks, some 'minister' decides how much money he gives yoor company? WTF, the scam only -->appears<-- to be working, because enough credits are given away, so that nobody needs to do anything. 207.53.228.192 02:52, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Sources

This I found multiple links in this article that are broken (because they are old) and can no longer be used as a verifiable source of data or information provided. For example, citation 4 had one and also another paper The Australian newspaper source. There might be more but I have not gone through all of the citations. Krishnapatelberk (talk) 23:22, 28 October 2018 (UTC)krishnapatelberk

Citation 17 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2005.05.014 does not contain the referenced information about EU limits and US cap and trade. The entire article is about the benefits of Title IV controls, and that they worked better and cheaper than expected. Pbmax (talk) 17:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

@Pbmax: The entire section is dubious at best, with misreadings and/or bad sources. The section (and other comments in the article) was made by a user who seemed to be on a crusade against emissions trading, the change was made here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emissions_trading&diff=prev&oldid=876816910 Econoglu (talk) 20:45, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Questions

Maybe it's my fault - but some one part of this article seems confusing - and I'd really appreciate any clarification. So when you buy credits does that perminately raise your cap? If that is true it seems kind of unfair, as your technically are passing your original cap each year, but you only had to pay that one fine years ago... again really appreciate any helpDaniel()Folsom ^T|_C|^U 01:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey Daniel, Although not an expert I added a simplified explanation of the whole concept under Talk:Carbon_credit check it out, hope it helps. --Evolve2k 12:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Possible answer

Yes, when a company buys credits they in essence are increasing their right to pollute. The caps usually are adjusted each year so that a credit purchase only covers a single year or some other limited time frame. Users with surplus credits -- they don't need to pollute as much as allowed -- can either sell the credits or donate them to a nonprofit organization that will "retire" them or remove them from the market. The company can get a tax deduction because the credit has value. ChrisCarsonThompson 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh I think I see, so the cap remains the same, it's just like you have to pay a tax on your overproduction. Thank you!--Daniel()Folsom ^T|_C|^U 03:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

This is also how some carbon offset providers work; they pool donors' contributions / customer payments (depending on whether they're non-profit or for-profit), purchase REC's or similar instruments, and retire those instruments. This effectively lowers the cap, and makes credits more scarce (read: more expensive). Individuals could do this themselves, but a seat on the Chicago Climate Exchange is out of the average citizen's price range. A good offset provider does some research into whose credits they're buying, rather than just blindly buying the cheapest offsets out there. But that's another article. -- A. 03:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

effects on environment

Alex S gutted this page in his first July 13 edit. I think he was a bit over-zealous. Although some things needed removed, there was a substantially relevent discussion about effects (pro and con) of emissions trading on the evironment prior to his gutting. I suggest an administrator revive the "effects on the environment" section as it existed before Alex S's July 13 2006 edit. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.216.235.42 (talk) 17:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

Cap & Trade vs. Baseline & Credit

There is persistent chatter on this page about problems with trading programs. In almost every case the problems can be attributed to the program not satisfying the necessary conditions for cap & trade program. In a Baseline and Credit program, sources that are typically not monitored can generate credits by changing their practices relative to a baseline. For example, a pig farmer captures methane and reduces his emissions -- he gets a credit. A farmer changes tillage and reduces phosphorus run-off, she gets a credit. These are difficult to develop and monitor and, if improperly designed, can create perverse incentives. Does anyone agree with me that a section clarifying this distinction would be useful?

Please clarify this in the article, with citations. Pgan002 (talk) 08:02, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Carbon Emissions Trading

This was merged from the talk page:

What Cap?

No country has a cap. Everybody is doing what they want. --CorvetteZ51 11:48, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Combination with Emissions Trading

• Maybe this page should be combined with Emissions Trading. The concepts are similar. --Jingshen 12:09, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Confusion of permits and credits

I suggest that the following sentence in the first paragraph that describes emission credits should be moved further down the page, after the basic description of the emission cap and permit trading system is complete, to avoid confusing the reader. Also, it is very specific to the Kyoto protocol implementation of emission trading.

The development of a carbon project that provides a reduction in Greenhouse Gas 
emissions is a way by which participating entities may generate tradeable carbon 
credits. Kyoto Protocol provides for this facet of its cap and trade program 
with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

And perhaps we should discuss the inter-changable use of 'emission permits' and 'emission credits'?

As far as I am aware the emission credit system is an optional add-on to an emission cap and permit trading system. First a government sets a cap on total emissions, then issues (or auctions) permits to emitters. If emitters want to emit more than they have permits for they have to buy additional permits on a market from other emitters. If they emit less, they can sell their permits to other emitters.

I think the CDM mechanism is a mechanism whereby participants outside the main cap and permit trading system (usually in developing countries) can sell emission credits to firms within the system by demonstrating that they carried out a project that resulted in them reducing emissions they would otherwise have emitted. Although it is outside the the emission cap region the emitters within the system can by these overseas credits to make up for any deficit between permits and their actual emissions.

Am I right?

I just noticed that the section 'Cap & trade vs. baseline & credit' describes exactly what I have just said. We could move the description of Kyoto's CDM system into this section. I'll wait and see what people think, I'm not an expert.

Billtubbs 23:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Prices vs. quantities

I've added a section on the important debate about price instruments (taxes) and quantity instruments (cap and trade systems). I think it's highly relevant, but I admit the section is a little too long, and it doesn't need to be under Emission Trading. Perhaps it should be a separate page. Comments welcome.

Billtubbs 00:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I was a bit skeptical about the prices vs. quantities discussion. Seemed relevant, but a bit too involved for this page. I haven't looked, but there might be a page on economic instruments for environmental protection -- that would be a better fit. Alternatively, the discussion could fit better on the environmental econ. page. RichWoodward 13:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I also added some additional critique points to the 'Criticism' section. I got these from some correspondence with Martin Wolfe of the Financial Times in March this year. I think they are fair points and I have tried to phrase them objectively and provide counter-arguments. Comments welcome.

66.183.82.201 02:22, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

This is not just about Carbon

In my opinion, this article has taken far too much emphasis on carbon markets. This is not the right page for such discussion. There are pages on Carbon Credits and Economics of global warming. Over the next several months, I hope to have time to reshape this page in a fashion that makes it more general. Please respond here if you feel this is inappropriate. RichWoodward 13:43, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

The Obscenity of Carbon Trading

Hi Folks

I would be interested in your thoughts on the following article recently published in Australia John D. Croft 01:28, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

"Reading the article by Kevin Smith on the "Obscenity of Carbon Trading" (BBC Viewpoint at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6132826.stm) I would think that I would join or amend the cartoon I saw for August Investments - the ethical trading & investment house. The cartoon said "Carbon Sequestration? That is just another word for 'Business as Usual'!"

It also reminds me of the quote that "If the only tool you have is a hammer - then all problems look like nails!"

I think this is the case with us. Because our economics only works on markets then the answer to every problem is a "market solution". But when we look at not just economics but at the wider field of "political-economy" we see that markets are only just part of the issue.

Free markets are based upon a number of a-priori assumptions -

1. Perfect information - this means "real" information about costs and benefits, not just in the present but projected infinitely into the future. (This requires us all to be omniscient and immortal!)

2. Perfect entry - this means that I have the power to set myself up in competition against any other "economic agent", where an "economic agent" is defined as an individual or a firm.

3. "Economic rationalism" in such circumstances is that I, as a sovereign consumer, rationally calculate my costs and benefits of all my choices, owing no extra-loyalty to anyone or anything except for contract obligations established in amarket place.

Only when these three conditions are meet will market mechanisms really work. Anything else is considered a "market distortion" and, by the logic of the market, needs to be removed.

Thus loyalty to a family distorts economic decision making. We are taught to treat your family relationships as if they were market relationships - calculate your costs and benefits of being in or out of relationship and you will see the consequences. Over 40% of marriages end in divorce.

Thus loyalty to a community distorts economic decision making. Have the market determine all interconnections within between people in the community and look at the results. Most people today haven't a clue what an authentically caring and sharing community is like, and communities all around the world are collapsing.

The ecology of the living world distorts the process of economic decision making. Have the market determine the value of all ecological goods and services, ignoring intrinsic value of life itself (which surely must be of infinite value) and look at the consequences. We are participating in the greatest extinction of life on planet Earth - losing species at nearly 400 a day.

It was Karl Polanyi in his book "The Great Transition", who showed nearly 50 years ago that markets, when instituted act like social acid to eat away almost anything it touches. And when they do, laws are required to limit and contain the negative effects that markets bring. For instance, when capitalism began we treated people as commodities, the slave trade was a "free market" in people. So we needed prohibition of slavery, and then labour laws to prohibit the exploitation of children, and then industrial health and safety laws, and trade unions and ... and ... and all of this requires political decision making in a participatory democratic fashion.

So we need to realise that a Carbon Trading System is not the only solution to greenhouse gas emissions. We do need a carbon trading system, but we also need carbon taxes. We need incentive schemes for renewable and greenhouse free energy, that minimise some of the research and development costs. We need to internalise the "greenhouse externalities" into production costs, and abolish the hidden subsidies we currently give to the fossil fuel industries. We need to reduce the adoption costs of clean technologies. We need "carbon monitoring and inspection teams" to ensure open-ness and honesty in reporting of embedded carbon in all of our products, so consumers can make honest decisions. We need to revitalise our communities so they can undertake common initiatives to support individual household after individual household to make the changes. We need to move from being a "Carbon Blind" to being a "Carbon literate" culture, through education and awareness.

John Howard, in thinking that he has "solved the Climate Change" issue by proposing a Carbon Tax whose figures will be determined the government only after the election, is attempting to pull the wool over our eyes yet again. He clearly has only one hammer, and we are the nails. Lets hope it is his electoral coffin, not ours."

The above article proves beyond any doubt that, when it comes to science, Australia is still a nation of socialist sheep-farmers who have too much time on their hands. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.20.129.40 (talk) 02:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Debatepedia link

A Debatepedia link on the cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax debate. Relevant external link? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.198.98.193 (talk)

It's a link to site that fails our external link guidelines. I have removed it. -- SiobhanHansa 02:43, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Paragraph duplication between lines 108 and 180

As at least the third person to recently re-remove the duplicate information paragraph under the subheading "Kyoto Protocol", I must ask why registered users continue to replace it, as it is, word for word, the exact same as the paragraph below it, and must inquire what value a clear (and easily rectified) error would hold, particularly as removing said section has been previously flagged as vandalism, etc.

--74.62.95.203 (talk) 19:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I am sorry about that. I was trying to revert one part of the edit and did not notice that part of the edit. I think the other registered users made an honest mistake as well. It is important for editors to leave an edit summary to prevent this from happening.--Jorfer (talk) 21:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

A better question is why there is so much discussion of Kyoto in this article. It should be about emissions trading in general, not carbon trading almos exclusively. RichWoodward (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:42, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Do be bold if you can expand it, the non CO2 schemes especially. This article's focus on Kyoto will be inevitable to some extent, as carbon represents the largest market financially and globally, and all current schemes are based on Kyoto. In addition to the SOx schemes, US states & Australia have some proposed CO2 schemes, but even the most advanced hasn't yet finalised what it wants to do, though most have indicated a desirability to be internationally compatible/fungible by adopting Kyoto standards. However, I have noted that a couple of Kyoto-related items have snuck into the top generic part of the article, I've tweaked it to be less Kyoto where its not relevant. Ephebi (talk) 13:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Bad choice of image in the intro

This might seem like nitpicking to some, but I think the choice of image in the introduction is really bad. A pulp mill utilizing the Kraft process is pictured, but such mills consume very little fossile fuels compared to their production of pulp. The smoke shown is mainly water vapor and carbon dioxide coming from the recovery boiler and lime kiln, and possibly excess steam from other parts of the process. The water vapor is only visible as smoke because of ideal weather conditions, the mill is situated in Oulu, Finland, which is close to the polar circle and therefore has a quite cold climate. On a warm summer day it would most likely be invisible.

The carbon dioxide is not fossile as it comes from a biofuel (wood) and is thus not included in any emissions trading treaty. It comes from carbon in the wood (lignin which is burned in the recovery boiler, plus calciumcarbonate formed in said boiler being converted to calcium oxide in the lime kiln). The carbon in the carbonate also comes from the wood. Fossile fuels might be used in the lime kiln, but this amount is small and is often replaced by non-fossile fuels such as tall oil or bark gas.

In short, pulp mills aren't any major contributors to rising CO2-levels, and aren't affected much by emissions trading as they use so little fossile fuels. A steel mill, coal-fired power plant or cement mill would be a much better choice, as those industries consume large amounts of fossile fuels and are heavily affected by emissions trade, some even shutting down. --SneakyAce (talk) 18:02, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I didn't find any nice pictures of steel mills, but this picture of a coal power plant in Germany looks good. Unless someone comes up with a good reason to keep the current image in the article, I'll replace it with this one. --SneakyAce (talk) 18:13, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I say go ahead. If there is anyone with objections we'll find out later.--Jorfer (talk) 18:37, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Tort Law versus Cap and Trade

The market argument against cap and trade is a legitimate part of this article. Tort law is seen by many as an alternative which more effectively internalizes costs to polluters, holding them accountable. JLMadrigal (talk) 15:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I did not say that the discussion of Tort law and free market environmentalism is entirely inappropriate, only that it was way out of balance with its importance in this article. More critically, emissions trading should be seen as a way to implement an environmental standard once the decision has been made to regulate. The decision as to whether use a tort approach or a regulatory approach is at a higher level, logically prior to the decision to use a trading approach. RichWoodward (talk) 20:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Emission trading and emissions trading

I started this discussion topic as a place to explain why one would need to clarify the the article refers to both "emission trading" and "emissions trading". RichWoodward (talk) 23:06, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, You didn't provide any reasons or opinions here, but in the history you wrote unnecesary (everyone can figure out that these are the same)). As my edit summary already explained, users check an encycl. to know, not to figure out themselves; alternative versions not trivial: even very many native speakers made insecure by different use in different articles c.f. EU ETS).

It is standard policy in WP to provide all major versions of an article title, especially when these are due to regional variants of English. UK English is showing a fairly new trend towards using plural noun adjuncts (schools superintendent, and even two-cars garage etc.) that are simply still incorrect in US English (and used to be so in UK English). WP policy specifically states that you're free to use only the UK English variant of a term in an article and that it is not OK to replace it with that of another kind of English, but you are not at liberty to remove such regional variants from the first line of the article. It basically boils down to the fact that you personally prefer "emissions trading" and feel it is a viable variant of "emission trading" while very many English speakers think your preference is simply bad English. An international encyclopedia cannot use the form of a technical term that many consider bad English without any comment or at least providing the other variant.

BTW, it's very interesting that the EU did not follow the "new" UK trend in naming the EU ETS but does use European Chemicals Agency, which is ungrammatical to US ears. This is especially interesting since 25 times more UK academic sites have "chemical industry" than "chemicals industry".--Espoo (talk) 08:29, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

It really is trivial to any speaker of English. It is like differences in the pronunciation in the word "tomato". As long as one can be understood from the other both terms are not needed in the encylopedia That being said Manual labour does do the same thing as you are doing, so it is alright, but I am going to do the same thing as Transactional account does with it.--Jorfer (talk) 23:30, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

1) You got it backwards; the singular adjunct noun is more common in North America than the UK. 2) Most WP users are not experts on spelling or grammar and very definitely confused by seeing two different spellings of a technical term. It is standard WP policy to list these different versions irrespective of whether they have a clear regional bias or not so that users realise both are correct and not a typo or bad English even though it sounds that way to them with their regional bias. Just because the singular/plural difference here sounds trivial or even identical to your ears does not mean that one does not sound wrong to English speakers from elsewhere. And you seem to have forgotten that most WP users are not native speakers of English. And even if they were in the minority, WP would still specifically strive to cater to the needs of all users, including non-native speakers. And they definitely need the information that the singular variant is acceptable and in use. 3) It seems you have not noticed that both UK and US and other possible variant pronunciations are specifically provided in all cases like "tomato" if and when one pronunciation is provided. WP specifically never provides only one regional pronunciation if it differs from others. --Espoo (talk) 11:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

• I've worked in this field for the last couple of years and must confess that everyone I've come across has used them both synonymously - I just took a look at the EU europa/emission site - it confirmed my suspicion that they use both spellings interchangeably. The default dialect of English used across the EU/EC is British English. The first carbon system is/was called the UK emissions trading scheme, although the first trading system in emissions was the US Clean Air Act system for "sulfur", as they call it. As 99% of real activity and volume trading in this area is now based in the financial centres of Europe, esp. London, around the EU ETS I'd default to the usual British plural spelling, but frankly its never been an issue with anyone I've come across before. If it really causes you a hang-up I'd suggest putting a note at the end of the lead paragraph rather than using such a clunky lead sentence. BTW, although "cap & trade" has been used to describe the policy, its not a commonly-used term by practitioners, IME. Ephebi (talk) 16:28, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

• • The beginning of color shows how almost all WP articles deal with an article title for which different spellings or forms exist. According to this well-established WP policy, the alternatives are presented right at the beginning and only there. It is not OK to use the alternatives elsewhere in the article, but they are presented right in the first line so users don't have to look for them and to emphasise that they also exist and are often equally valid.
  • The very fact that even the EU uses both spellings shows that it would be simply incorrect for WP to try playing language police or International English Academy by mentioning only one. In addition, more than 30% of Google Scholar hits are for the plural form.
  • Plural adjunct nouns sound wrong to most North Americans except in cases where they are necessary (e.g. arms race), so most of the people you've met are probably not North Americans. If some that didn't object are North Americans, they are probably experts in this field like you and therefore (or for other reasons) well informed on this issue and therefore used to the form more commonly but not exclusively used in UK English. In other words, North Americans are perhaps more willing to accept something here that goes against the grain, especially when quoting, since emission trading is so far essentially a European activity, as you yourself mentioned.
  • Just because something looks like a trivial difference to UK English speakers does not mean that it does not sound wrong or is not confusing to people speaking other kinds of English. You have also apparently not understood that non-native speakers need help to realise that both forms are acceptable and that they would be confused if WP simply glossed over the fact that WP uses both forms and even in this article (in the link to the EU ETS).
  • I've edited the article according to your info on cap and trade. --Espoo (talk) 20:23, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Error in section about cap & trade and baseline credit

"In a baseline and credit program a set of polluters that are not under an aggregate cap can create credits by reducing their emissions below a baseline level of emissions. These credits can be purchased by polluters that are under a regulatory limit."

Am I wrong or doesn't that have to be "polluters that are over a regulatory limit"? Because if "polluters" are already below the limit, they could create credits, too, don't they? Could someone correct this error, please or enlighten me if I am wrong. Thank you. -- 08:54, 13 March 2008 (UTC) KaT,

What is meant by "under" here is "regulated," i.e., they are required to comply. I'll rewrite the text to clarify. RichWoodward (talk) 19:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Adding this article to the Finance Hub

Increasingly carbon trading is indexed and traded as a commodity. It is my opinion that the article (especially with respect to the term trading) should be included in the Wikipedia Finance section under commodities as the current trading scheme is a replication of other commodity/capital finance models. 192.223.243.5 (talk) 19:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the carbon markets should be indexed under the finance section. However, this is not an article solely about carbon markets. It is about the general principle of tradeable emissions permits as applied to any pollutant. Nonetheless, such permits are increasingly being treated as commodities for a variety of pollutants. RichWoodward (talk) 13:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Price of CO2 equivalent

It would be informative if the article covered the price of CO2 equivalents over time in the various submarkets. What the market price will be is a key factor in the political and economic debate. -- Beland (talk) 12:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure, but since this article is about trading in general, not just CO2, that should not appear here. Instead it should be on the pages specifically related to the CO2 market. RichWoodward (talk) 14:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Since there is not a separate page anymore for CO2 trading, this is an appropriate page to have it. If the CO2 section expands enough, it would justify it's own article.--Jorfer (talk) 04:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

There are Carbon Credit and Carbon offset pages. Those seem like better places to start a general page on CO2 trading. There is a need to have a page that addresses the general issue of emissions trading and clearly this is that page. RichWoodward (talk) 20:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Carbon Tax vs Auctioned Cap and Trade

1) This article does a poor job of destinguishing between auctioned and non-auctioned cap and trade systems. While they are technically similar, the difference is pretty significant in terms of what people should want. No average citizen in their right mind would want a non-auctioned cap and trade over a carbon tax, but they might want an auctioned cap and trade.

2) Would I be right in saying that an auctioned cap and trade could suffer from oligarchies creating the largest portion of emissions? If company X makes 60% of the emissions before the introduction of the cap and we would expect it to have a major portion of the emissions after the introduction of the cap, won't it end up buying fewer credits then it should want in order to drive down the price of the auctioned credits? If one of the purposes of the tax or auction is to return the profit made by limiting supply back into the hands of the people, then this would subvert that intention. Isn't that another flaw of the auctioned cap and trade vs the carbon tax? Champben2002 (talk) 19:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

• There are different POVs on the merits & demerits of each, and an appropriate proportion. Its not a simple equation. Obviously a 100% auctioned scheme is fairer on new entrants, and the income comes into the public purse.

If I understand your second question, the hypothecation issue is the same with straight taxes as with auctioning - it will always be very tempting for the government to see the cash generated as general income for the public purse (or for patching in a hole in a budget deficit), rather than being put to environmental purposes. However, with auctions, the income is more public and transparent than with a tax. The cap & trade systems in place or being proposed have, or are, considering high penalties in the event of an entity having a short fall when it comes time to surrender their allowances. Thus prices will rise in the event that significant emitters envisage suffering a shortfall. (And, BTW, no competition regulator in the Western world should ever allow a single commercial organisation to have 60% market share)

One issue with grandfathering allowances is that, outside of truly competitive markets, there is a probablity of incumbent players receiving "windfall profits" (when they get to pass on (non-existent) carbon costs to their consumers). However, they should be wary of returning these excess profits as increased dividends to their shareholders. That extra income should be used to pump-prime their investment programmes, voluntary rebates, or social activities, otherwise governments can threaten them with "windfall taxes" - as is happening in the UK market right now.

Additionally, some percentage of grandfathered rights can be politically more acceptable as it can help transition these players into a 100% auctioned regime at a later date. Ephebi (talk) 13:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Criticism

Under this section I would have thought that a major problem with Emission trading is that unless all countries agree to participate, the effect will be to penalize the economy of the those countries that are in the scheme. In Australia an Emission trading scheme has been proposed and already some companies have said if ETS is introduced they will move offshore. PR —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.148.145 (talk) 04:01, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

While this is no doubt true, it is an accusation that can be leveled against the limitations of law outside of national boundaries in general (copyright, gambling, etc.) and not just emissions trading. If you do however find a a source that says this, you can add it to the criticism section as long as it conforms to Wikipedia's guidelines (which will be decided by other editors once you add it if you are unsure).--Jorfer (talk) 13:14, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

In my comment above there are two contentions. The first is that all countries must be in the Scheme. This view is well supported by Prof Ross Garnaut in the first two pages of his draft report on climate change and also by the well know economist Jeffrey Sachs at an Australian National university conference on the 14th of July.
The second contention that this would be detrimental to the terms of trade of countries that participate as against those that don’t. This might be more difficult to prove, but nevertheless it is a common complaint levelled against an EST. Today (16th July 08) in Australia it was reported in a major local paper (the Age) that the aluminium industry and the cement industry were making just this complaint. It was further repeated by a member of the government oppostion on the ABC (one of the national radio stations here) plus he added that it would simply drive emissions off shore. While there may be no proof that this is indeed what would happen, I would describe these comments as criticism.
In light of the above I would like to see a statement at the top of the list of criticisms along the lines of
The EST requires all the countries that are major greenhouse gas emitters’ to participate in order to be effective.
I will leave it to others to add this comment to the article if they think it is appropriate. PR

Well, I think this would belong more in the intro, since all emissions trading schemes need all countries to participate in order to be 100% effective. To say that it would not be effective at all without all countries being involved is a lie, because this assumes everything else being equal when a company evaluates which country to pollute in; it is not. Transportation costs, for example, can make it so that it would be more profitable to buy emissions credits than offshore production.--Jorfer (talk) 01:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

This was actually the Bush Administration's argument against Kyoto, and probably an argument worth including. If your nation participates in cap-and-trade, and other nations do not, your nation is at a competitive disadvantage. The United States didn't enter into Kyoto because China and India didn't enter into Kyoto. Stopping the kitchen sink from dripping helps the environment, sure, but might not be your best option if the bathtub is stuck running at full flow. Dean (talk) 18:29, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Controversy over Man-made climate change

Why is there no mention under "Criticisms" the fact that there is no real consensus or agreed upon scientific data that the perceived (and in fact tiny) measured changes in climate change are even man made and worth all this effort? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.216.128.226 (talk) 23:07, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Most likely because that would be a criticism about the more general Mitigation of global warming rather than this specific scheme of mitigating global warming. You feel that attempts to mitigate global warming in general are misguided rather than this specific way. If you would be against a harsh tax on polluters than your criticism goes beyond simply this article. I would thus advise you to take your complaint to the mitigation of global warming talk page.--Jorfer (talk) 01:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of GDP and the Kyoto Protocol

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that the financial effect of compliance through trading within the Kyoto commitment period will be 'limited' at between 0.1-1.1% of GDP among trading countries.[15] This compares with an estimate in the Stern report which placed the costs of doing nothing at five to 20 times higher.[16]"

This section is misleading, or at best missing crucial details. The comparison should not only be between the cost of Kyoto versus doing nothing. The comparison must take into account the EFFECTIVENESS of the Kyoto Protocol in impacting global warming, if all of the benchmarks are met. If Kyoto completely reverses warming entirely, then the 1:30 ratio of costs would be accurate. If it only reduced warming by 3%, though, then the relative cost becomes 1:1, which is not so impressive or compelling. Any lower than that, and we are losing money.

As an analogy, imagine that I propose a program where the homeless are employed to cut my grass with nail clippers at a government subsidized $1,000,000 an hour. The cost of that program would be a much tinier fraction of the US GDP than is Kyoto, but that doesn't make it a good program. You have to take into account what good it does anybody.

By leaving this bit of information out entirely, it is implied by default that Kyoto will completely reverse warming, which is by no means a very agreed upon prediction... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.202.245.227 (talk) 04:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

new source

This might be useful. LeadSongDog (talk) 13:53, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

the extent to which companies can gain a commercial advantage from trading of carbon permits

Zr00108 (talk) 23:34, 7 November 2008 (UTC)the extent to which companies can gain a commercial advantage from trading of carbon permitsZr00108 (talk) 23:34, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Auustralia, Garnaut, Not Independent

Where is the evidence for the independence that is claimed by the Commissioner and Commissionee.

Just because the Dear Leader and his appointment say so does not make it fact, and even after being parroted by the media it is still not from a credible or reputable source. Self praise or analysis may be a guide to what the source believes or wants people to believe but its clearly not impartial.

As for the citation, of relevence to 'independence' the draft report contains the following .

Terms of reference ...The Report will embody the independent judgments of its author...

Garnaut

...But in taking these arguments into the national debate, let us make sure that there is also a strong and independent centre for the policy-making process that can keep sectoral claims in perspective...

Well there you have it. The PM (Prime Minister) claims that his appointment and resulting process are independent and his appointment agrees. The song sheet has been written and the media sing along, apparently actual proof is not required. Its an almost universal truth that leaders claim noble or virtuous intent for their actions and therefore their pronouncements should carry no weight.

It should be self evident to anyone who retains the ability to think that Garnaut is not and cannot be independent, certainly not from the goverment that appointed him or from the presuppositions that he holds, whatever they may be, and that the nature of and process for initial selection of a review are subject to partisan pressures.

Parroting of well worn and hackneyed propaganda and other government bullshit is not a substitute for impartial citation. --Theo Pardilla (talk) 08:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Argument why Carbon Fees are superior to Cap and Trade

Many experts with experience in this emissions regulation field believe that the Cap and Trade is not implementable. See - Argument why Carbon Fees are superior to Cap and Trade --Sclinder65 (talk) 17:09, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, apparently those "experts" haven't been paying attention, because the sulfur dioxide cap and trade program in the US has been implemented since 1993 and produced overcompliance with reduction targets for 1995. Not only is it implementable, it works! Mervyn Emrys (talk) 02:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

It works fine if there is an acceptable limit of pollution, such as so many millions of tons of sulfur. For greenhouse gases it doesn't work at all, because you would have to set the limit at zero for 2009, and what are you going to trade if the limit is zero? 199.125.109.113 (talk) 00:18, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

And if you wanted to achieve that using a fee you'd have to set the tax at infinity. That doesn't seem very likely either. RichWoodward (talk) 13:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Setting the limit at zero for 2009? I think you might be a little mixed up on how it works. Anyways, last week the preliminary results of the EU ETS showed about a 4% decline in C02 emissions for 2008 meaning the system is working. Europe uses a combination of cap and trade and carbon taxes. Canking (talk) 12:56, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

This and similar material ought to be added. CSIRO recently attempted to censor a report that was critical of Emissions trading and favoured a Carbon tax: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/gagged-csiro-scientist-resigns-20091203-k7ir.html LamontCranston (talk) 13:33, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Dr Splash made quite a 'splash'!Mrfebruary (talk) 22:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Comparison with carbon taxes is insufficient

I think it is incorrect to have a few statements about how emissions trading is preferable to carbon taxes and then only one sentence describing the other point of view. As well, there are a lot more problem with emissions trading than written in the statement "Critics of emissions trading point to problems of complexity, monitoring, enforcement, and sometimes dispute the initial allocation methods and cap" at the beginning of the article. Firstly, the treatment of new entrants and closures under free distribution of emissions permits. Secondly, that with free distribution of permits, many companies experience windfall profits. Thirdly, that businesses have more difficulty in projecting future costs (Europe's emissions prices were 30 Euros in July 2008 but reach 8 Euros in February 2009). Fourthly, that emissions trading probably won't cover all emissions from the economy so how do you treat the rest?. Finally, use of international emissions offset credits (a key feature of emissions trading) is more than just about complexity as there are concerns about corruption and governance in developing countries for example. So basically what I'm trying to say is, a brief mention of why opponents might prefer carbon taxes doesn't cut it. Canking (talk) 04:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

So, add some text with reliable sources, please. Criticism should lead to constructive edits. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 05:00, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Will do shortly. I will make the changes here first so that those who are unhappy with what I'm proposing may say so before it's in the article. Canking (talk) 15:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The abreviation "NGO" is used a couple of times...

The abbreviation "NGO" is used a couple of times, but there is no explanation of what that stands for. Wimfort (talk) 05:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

"Nongovernmental organization." Mervyn Emrys (talk) 01:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the definition and for adding it to the article. Wimfort (talk) 17:54, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Glad I could be of some small assistance. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 18:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Where is the proof that the greenhouse gas effect exist?

As an environment engineer I have been trying to find proof that there is data from tests verifing that the greenhouse gas effect has been tested. There is nothing on the internet that verifies that the greenhouse gas effect exist!!!!! There are technical papers and test result that show that the concept of the greenhouse gas effect is a violation of the Second law of thermodynamic. Thus all of this retoric about taxes and controlling CO2 emissions is a waste of time, money and is a total hoax. As a start R.W.Wood in 1909 demonsrated that the greenhouse effect and the greenhouse gas effect do not exist. Other references are"Greenhouse gas hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics" By Heinz Thieme, another is "Falsification of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within the Frame of Physics" by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner. Why does the world choose to ignore the evidence that man made global climate change is a conspirace to steal money from the people of this world for the benefite of a few. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.205.105.73 (talk) 19:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you should look at the Intergovernmental Panel Convention on Climate Change's 4th assessment and their methodology behind their estimates. As for your claim that it's a conspiracy to steal money from the poor, that completely invalidates your credibility so I would remain from speaking like that if you want people to listen to you. Now, are there holes in the theory of global warming? Of course. There are also holes in the theory of evolution but that doesn't make it wrong. The majority of the evidence points to climate change being real and caused by humans. Canking (talk) 20:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

In any case, this doesn't belong in emissions trading. There are whole articles devoted to this kind of thing, most notably Global warming conspiracy theory which you can consult. I liked the "environment engineer", though.JQ (talk) 20:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Canking and JQ. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 01:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I would ignore the link above Global warming conspiracy theory as pseudo-science junk. Here is proof positive about global warming http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/research/themes/carbon/ - skip sievert (talk) 16:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

• Don't feed the trolls. 199.125.109.113 (talk) 00:15, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Sentence maitenance suggestions needed

This sentence:

According to some, cap and trade "is inefficient and prone to market failure", and only a carbon tax "allows you to make an international agreement globally effective in a short period of time."

concerns me because it uses quotes to push a bias - you read this as "cap and trade is inefficient and prone to market failure". I would like to de-weasel this. Any suggestions? (BTW, if you think this isn't a big deal, Google "cap-and-trade" and look at the Wiki entry. Makes us look more like a blog than an encyclopedia.) --JaGa^talk 16:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

No takers? Well, I don't think such a loaded statement has a place in the intro. I'm planning on moving it out, or at least reducing its thinly veiled attack. I would like some input for I just dig into the intro, though. --JaGa^talk 08:55, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

As I recall, it was a referenced quote from James Hansen, although many others have said the same thing. 199.125.109.113 (talk) 03:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Responsibility section

The added section on responsibility did not seem to be a good fit here. It does not seem to be focused on emissions trading, but on the general issue of how costs should be passed on. There were no references. The POV was not neutral and, finally, the reference to current debates in the U.S. Congress were quite narrow geographically and in time. RichWoodward (talk) 03:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

What a Cap and Trade Really is.

Essentially a cap and trade system is a tax on carbon. However, this is not so much a bad thing. We need a tax in order to curb anthropogenic climate change. However, how do we choose what to price carbon? That is where the brilliance of the system comes in. The system will use market forces (supply and demand) to determine the value of carbon.

Criticisms The biggest criticism of the system must be the actual structure of the systems implemented by government. Most recently, politicians in the United States have passed a bill through the House of Representatives. The bill unfortunately is quite useless as it simply gives away the majority (85%) of the carbon permits. This takes away the teeth of the bill and does not create any economic incentive to reduce pollution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcoving28 (talk • contribs) 04:55, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Please see WP:NOTFORUM.--Jorfer (talk) 15:42, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

While I would prefer to see less grandfathering, it is incorrect that giving away permits reduces the incentive to abate. The question is how big the allocation is. The SO2 program grandfathered almost all of the rights and has been hugely successful in reducing emissions. RichWoodward (talk) 19:31, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

History

This section is somewhat unclear to me. In this sentence, "Each abatement strategy was compared with the 'least cost solution' produced by a computer optimization program to identify the least costly combination of source reductions in order to achieve a given abatement goal," how does the computer program calculate the "least cost solution"? How does this "least cost solution" lead to cap and trade?

Also, under the four phases of development, what is it referring to when it says "tinkering with 'flexible regulation' at the EPA?

What "offset-mechanism" taken up in Clean Air Act in 1977 is it referring to?

Is there any links for this information? --Infoneeded821 (talk) 18:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax

I am going to revert the edit of Ouedbirdwatcher made on October 20 2009 and delete the term 'Cap and Tax'. 'Cap and trade' is a common synonym for trading schemes for resources/emissions/pollutants. The term gets 2.5 million hits on a Google search. A Google search for cap and tax results in 547,000 hits. In the top ten we see the WSJ and Sarah Palin and Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post. Cap and tax is a politically-charged term advanced by a minority. It deserves to be included in the article, but not as in the current wording of the introduction which treats the two terms as if they have equal status. They do not. Relevant policies are WP:DUE and WP:NPOV. Mrfebruary (talk) 08:56, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Paying for carbon capture in the fuel price

There is a problem at the heart of cap and trade, how to allocate the permits to emit or the revenue from auctioning them. It is clear from the response of oil and coal price to minor excess demand just before the boom turned to crunch that we are prepared to pay almost anything to sustain our energy consumption. The rights to emit will be worth trillions of dollars and sustainable worldwide agreement on who is entitled to sell them will therefore be extremely difficult.

There is another way that all nations could find attractive and easier to agree to without protracted negotiation.

Fossil fuel producers and importers would contract for the capture and sequestration of a quantity of carbon dioxide equal to a proportion of that produced from the fuel they supply. The proportion would start at a few percent and build up. This would increase fuel price gradually, encouraging energy saving, nuclear, renewables, electric cars etc. It would also provide full, immediate funding for carbon capture and storage. Carbon tax or cap and trade schemes on the other hand only provide sufficient funding for carbon capture when tax rate or permit price has reached a high level, which may be too late.

Energy saving, nuclear, renewables, electric cars etc. are only ways of filling the energy gap that cutting carbon dioxide emissions will create and mankind has been effectively filling energy gaps for centuries without the aid of agreed national or global strategies, taxes or caps. Carbon capture is different. It is a way of stopping pollution and will always add cost. You can legislate to stop pollution (which is economically inefficient) or you can use market forces by giving credit in a cap and trade system, credit against a carbon tax or by paying directly in fuel prices as above. If carbon capture is driven in any of these ways all the other things will happen too.

The contract might permit capture to be delayed for a year if the quantity captured were increased by 10%, and for another year for another 10% etc. This would not only help with plant problems, but would also allow contracts to be placed today, providing a huge incentive to get carbon capture and storage up and running as soon as possible. It is not lack of know-how that is holding back carbon capture but the lack of an incentive to apply it widely, except as a demonstration of the technology.

To contain global warming we must soon stop carbon emissions from power generation, cement manufacture etc. and substitute electricity for fuel use in many domestic, industrial and transport applications. Taxing carbon, capping emissions or contracting for carbon capture when fuel is produced could all provide the economic incentive, but unless the world joins in they will not solve the problem.

Contracting for carbon capture is certain to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to whatever annual target is set (if the contracts are honoured) and is relatively easy for everyone to agree to because:

· It will appeal to rapidly growing and mature countries alike. There are no national caps to restrict relative growth.

· It will allow all industries in all countries to compete on a level playing field. There are no carbon tax or emission cost differentials.

· Because there is only one number to agree, the global annual target, extensive international negotiations will be unnecessary. There will be no national targets to haggle over and perhaps never meet. There will be no issue about who gets the revenue from a carbon tax or what the rate should be or who gets free allowances (or the revenue from an auction) with cap and trade.

· Enforcement is straightforward and does not rely on the co-operation of every country. The contracts would be traded and recorded centrally, mostly placed and paid for by the international energy companies. If countries were uncooperative and used their own fuel internally without contracting for carbon capture, a central monitoring organisation could impose an increased capture proportion on imports or exports of fuel for that country to compensate.

Put simply, carbon capture and storage could typically cost 50 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide emission avoided http://www.ccsassociation.org.uk/docs/2009/CCSA%20International%20Manifesto.pdf . This is equivalent to $32/barrel of oil and the contract would only be for a proportion of that. This is modest compared to price changes over the last few years.

The major complication is that it is only practical to capture carbon dioxide from large point sources like power stations. Forcing 75% capture on the global market through this scheme would drive fuel price up and electricity price down until we switched from fuel to electricity for many industrial, domestic and transport applications. Once nearly all power stations etc. had captured their emissions there would be an incentive to build new power plants simply to create more carbon dioxide to capture and to dump the electricity they generated onto the market at a low price. Fossil fuel power generation with carbon capture would collect payment for all the captured carbon but only pay back 75% in its fuel price, giving it an unfair advantage over nuclear and renewables. It would be perverse to tax carbon capture while we were trying to encourage it, but as we approached the endgame national governments could tax away the 25% of the capture contract price that was not being paid in the fuel price. The revenue could then be paid out per kilowatt-hour to subsidise power from all clean generators.

Eventually we could define the proportion of carbon to be captured, based on fossil fuel production at the time, such that global emissions were contained at the level that the oceans absorb annually. That is about 2.2 billion tonnes of carbon per year (25% of current emissions). Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would then stop rising, assuming zero net contribution from deforestation and other land based sources and sinks.Jem Cooper (talk) 17:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Geographical imbalance

I removed the recommendation for improvement in geographical balance in the programs section. This does not seem to be a weakness of the article in its current form. RichWoodward (talk) 14:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The term "cap and trade" ?

Couldnt "cap and trade" simply point to Governmental interference in business rather than having something to do with pollution?

85.185.172.1 (talk) 09:48, 17 February 2010 (UTC)Gopshtasp

Changes to several sections

UK Climate Change Levy

All three methods are being used as policy instruments to control greenhouse gas emissions: the EU-ETS is a quantity system using the cap and trading system to meet targets set by National Allocation Plans, the UK's Climate Change Levy is a price system using a direct carbon tax, while China uses the CO2 market price for funding of its Clean Development Mechanism projects, but imposes a safety valve of a minimum price per tonne of CO2.

The UK Climate Change Levy is an energy tax, not a carbon tax:

Pearce, D. (2005). "The United Kingdom Climate Change Levy: A study in political economy" (PDF). OECD Environment Directorate, Centre for Tax Policy and Administration. Retrieved August 30, 2009.

I've changed this to:

All three methods are being used as policy instruments to control greenhouse gas emissions: the EU-ETS is a quantity system using the cap and trading system to meet targets set by National Allocation Plans, Denmark has a price system using a carbon tax, while China uses the CO2 market price for funding of its Clean Development Mechanism projects, but imposes a safety valve of a minimum price per tonne of CO2

Incomplete country cooperation and border adjustments

Most economic studies of the costs of reducing carbon emissions assume global participation,[28][29][30][31] but since the Kyoto Protocol has limited country participation, which is likely to continue in any post-Kyoto agreement, carbon leakage will arise. Direct leakage effects occur when production of a good is shifted to a country not bound to reduce its carbon emissions. Indirect leakage results from the lower world price of petrochemicals, especially oil and coal. Non-participating countries will import more oil and coal, both to fuel the production of energy-intensive exports and goods produced for domestic consumption.[32] Economic considerations of free riding, expectations, and general equilibrium studies suggest that these effects can be substantial.[33] One of the controversies about carbon mitigation policy thus arises about how to "level the playing field" with border adjustments.[34] One component of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, for example, calls for carbon surcharges on goods imported from countries without cap-and-trade programs. Even aside from issues of compliance with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, such border adjustments presume that the producing countries bear responsibility for the carbon emissions. As Wang and Watson[35] note, however, one quarter of China's carbon emissions are generated in the production of exports, mostly for consumers in developed countries, and a consumption-based cap-and-trade system may be more in accordance with the principles of benefit taxation (see Knut Wicksell).

This is a factually inaccurate, misleading, and biased discussion of carbon leakage. The assertions to do with carbon leakage are vague and biased. They omit negative leakages and do not give estimates of leakage rates. I've replaced this with:

Carbon leakage is the effect that regulation of emissions in one country/sector has on the emissions in other countries/sectors that are not subject to the same regulation (Barker et al., 2007). There is no consensus over the magnitude of long-term carbon leakage (Goldemberg et al., 1996, p. 31).

In the Kyoto Protocol, Annex I countries are subject to caps on emissions, but non-Annex I countries are not. Barker et al. (2007) assessed the literature on leakage. The leakage rate is defined as the increase in CO₂ emissions outside of the countries taking domestic mitigation action, divided by the reduction in emissions of countries taking domestic mitigation action. Accordingly, a leakage rate greater than 100% would mean that domestic actions to reduce emissions had had the effect of increasing emissions in other countries to a greater extent, i.e., domestic mitigation action had actually led to an increase in global emissions.

Estimates of leakage rates for action under the Kyoto Protocol ranged from 5 to 20% as a result of a loss in price competitiveness, but these leakage rates were viewed as being very uncertain. For energy-intensive industries, the beneficial effects of Annex I actions through technological development were viewed as possibly being substantial. This beneficial effect, however, had not been reliably quantified. On the empirical evidence they assessed, Barker et al. (2007) concluded that the competitive losses of then-current mitigation actions, e.g., the EU ETS, were not significant.

My revision is based on the IPCC literature assessments that are more reliable than individual papers and undergo more comprehensive peer-review. Additionally, they are government approved. It is totally inadequate to refer to individual papers on a topic like this since they may be biased towards particular viewpoints.

To correct for the bias towards US protectionist views, I've added this bit:

A general perception among developing countries is that discussion of climate change in trade negotiations could lead to "green protectionism" by high-income countries (World Bank, 2010, p. 251). Tariffs on imports ("virtual carbon") consistent with a carbon price of $50 ton/CO₂ could be significant for developing countries. World Bank (2010) commented that introducing border tariffs could lead to a proliferation of trade measures where the competitive playing field is viewed as being uneven. Tariffs could also be a burden on low-income countries that have contributed very little to the problem of climate change.

Kyoto Protocol

I've rewritten the section on the Kyoto Protocol. I thought the previous revision was weak and in need of improvement:

The Kyoto Protocol is a 1997 international treaty which came into force in 2005, which binds most developed nations to a cap-and-trade system for the six major greenhouse gases

"Binds" isn't a good word. The Kyoto Protocol does not "bind" countries to a cap-and-trade system, rather it provides for one. It does not prevent from meeting their caps in any way they choose to. Indeed, some countries have a combination of a tax and cap system, e.g., Denmark and Sweden.

The UNFCCC validates all CDM projects to ensure they create genuine additional savings and that there is no carbon leakage.

This sentence suggests too much certainty over the validity of the CDM. I've changed this to:

The CDM covers projects taking place in non-Annex I countries, while JI covers projects taking place in Annex I countries. CDM projects are supposed to contribute to sustainable development in developing countries, and also generate "real" and "additional" emission savings, i.e., savings that only occur thanks to the CDM project in question (Carbon Trust, 2009, p. 14). Whether or not these emission savings are genuine is, however, difficult prove (World Bank, 2010, pp. 265-267).

The issue of carbon leakage is covered in the main CDM article. I don't think it's worth covering here because the main concern over the CDM is additionality. Leakage is a secondary issue.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that the financial effect of compliance through trading within the Kyoto commitment period will be limited at between 0.1-1.1% of GDP among trading countries.[39] By comparison, the Stern report estimated that the cost of mitigating climate change would be 1 per cent of global GDP and the costs of doing nothing would be five to 20 times higher.

This is an improper synthesis. The Stern Review's estimate is for business-as-usual climate change versus a policy to limit concentrations to 450-550 CO2e. I've deleted the second sentence. If you were to refer to an economic assessment of Kyoto, it would be better to refer to a cost-benefit analysis. Personally I would prefer that this wasn't done. It's already covered in the article views on the Kyoto Protocol.

I am really impressed with the consistency of your work on this page. Its great. Thanks. Mrfebruary (talk) 11:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

EU ETS

This section was rather weak. I've beefed it up a bit and used higher quality sources in my edit. Enescot (talk) 04:34, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

References

Rewrite of several sections - MRV, enforcement...

MRV

There is an open-source tool for helping operators accurately measure and plan their emissions.

I've deleted this sentence. I think it's a blatant advert for a product.

Enforcement

I don't think this section offers a balanced treatment. It seems to be mainly interested in the difficulties of enforcement, and doesn't have much in the way of practical examples of enforcement, e.g., the EU ETS or the US SO2 program. It's also vague and makes statements without explaining exactly how big a problem enforcement is.

Voluntary surrender of units

I don't think this section was of sufficient importance or merit to be included in this article. I've moved it to the carbon emission trading#Voluntary surrender of units article. It just seems to be promotional material for a particular viewpoint, which I don't think is notable or appropriate. The main advantage of emissions trading is that it lowers the overall costs of meeting a target. The idea of buying permits to increase the permit price is absurd (except in the case of government's controlling the price, but no one seriously suggests this). The way of getting the permit price sufficiently high is for the government to limit the number of permits it gives away. What percentage of permits in the carbon market have been retired? I doubt that it is very much.

Criticism

The previous revision, for reference:

There are a large number of critics of carbon trading as a control mechanism. Critics include environmental justice nongovernmental organizations,[80] economists, labor organizations and those concerned about energy supply and excessive taxation. Some see carbon trading as a government takeover of the free market.[81] They argue that trading pollution allowances should be avoided because they result in failures in accounting, dubious science and the destructive impacts of projects upon local peoples and environments.[82] Instead, they advocate making reductions at the source of pollution and energy policies that are "justice-based" and "community-driven."[83] Many argue that emissions trading schemes based upon cap and trade will necessarily reduce jobs and incomes.[84] Most of the criticisms have focused on the carbon market created through investment in Kyoto Mechanisms. Criticism of cap-and-trade emissions trading has generally been more limited to lack of credibility in the first phase of the EU ETS.[85]

Critics argue that emissions trading does little to solve pollution problems overall, since groups that do not pollute sell their conservation to the highest bidder. Overall reductions would need to come from a sufficient reduction of allowances available in the system.

When discussing "tree offsets, forest campaigner Jutta Kill of European environmental group FERN, clarified the physical reality that "Carbon in trees is temporary: Trees can easily release carbon into the atmosphere through fire, disease, climatic changes, natural decay and timber harvesting."[86]

Regulatory agencies run the risk of issuing too many emission credits, diluting the effectiveness of regulation, and practically removing the cap. In this case, instead of a net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, beneficiaries of emissions trading simply pollute more.[citation needed] The National Allocation Plans by member governments of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme were criticised for this when it became apparent that actual emissions would be less than the government-issued carbon allowances at the end of Phase I of the scheme. Certain emissions trading schemes have been criticised for the practice of grandfathering, where polluters are given free allowances by governments, instead of being made to pay for them.[87] Critics instead advocate for auctioning the credits. The proceeds could be used for research and development of sustainable technology.[88] Large free allocations of emission allowances to businesses have been shown to far disproportionally benefit household with higher incomes, thereby increasing economic inequality.[89]

Critics of carbon trading, such as Carbon Trade Watch, argue that it places disproportionate emphasis on individual lifestyles and carbon footprints, distracting attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken to tackle climate change.[81] Groups such as the Corner House have argued that the market will choose the easiest means to save a given quantity of carbon in the short term, which may be different to the pathway required to obtain sustained and sizable reductions over a longer period, and so a market-led approach is likely to reinforce technological lock-in. For instance, small cuts may often be achieved cheaply through investment in making a technology more efficient, where larger cuts would require scrapping the technology and using a different one. They also argue that emissions trading is undermining alternative approaches to pollution control with which it does not combine well, and so the overall effect it is having is to actually stall significant change to less polluting technologies.

The corresponding uncertainty under a tax is the level of emissions reductions achieved.[citation needed]

The Financial Times published an article about cap-and-trade systems which argued that "Carbon markets create a muddle" and "...leave much room for unverifiable manipulation".[90] Other critics point out that emissions trading schemes create new uncertainties and risks, which can be commodified by means of derivatives, thereby creating a new speculative market.[91]

Recent proposals for alternative schemes to avoid the problems of cap-and-trade schemes include Cap and Share, which was being actively considered by the Irish Parliament in May 2008, and the Sky Trust schemes.[80] These schemes state that cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax schemes inherently impact the poor and those in rural areas, who have less choice in energy consumption options.

Paragraph 1:

There are a large number of critics of carbon trading as a control mechanism. Critics include environmental justice nongovernmental organizations,[80] economists, labor organizations and those concerned about energy supply and excessive taxation. Some see carbon trading as a government takeover of the free market.[81] They argue that trading pollution allowances should be avoided because they result in failures in accounting, dubious science and the destructive impacts of projects upon local peoples and environments.[82] Instead, they advocate making reductions at the source of pollution and energy policies that are "justice-based" and "community-driven."[83] Many argue that emissions trading schemes based upon cap and trade will necessarily reduce jobs and incomes.[84] Most of the criticisms have focused on the carbon market created through investment in Kyoto Mechanisms. Criticism of cap-and-trade emissions trading has generally been more limited to lack of credibility in the first phase of the EU ETS.[85]

Bits of paragraph 1:

There are a large number of critics of carbon trading as a control mechanism.

This is a vague statement. How many is "large"? I've deleted it.

Some see carbon trading as a government takeover of the free market.[81]

This statement is not in the cited source. It's also economically illiterate.

They argue that trading pollution allowances should be avoided because they result in failures in accounting, dubious science and the destructive impacts of projects upon local peoples and environments.

Who are "they"? I've changed this to:

In the popular science magazine, New Scientist, Lohmann (2006) argued that trading pollution allowances should be avoided because they result in failures of accounting,[clarif] dubious science[clarific] and the destructive impacts of projects upon local peoples and environments.[82]

Many argue that emissions trading schemes based upon cap and trade will necessarily reduce jobs and incomes

Weasel word "many", which is not in the cited source. The statement about reducing jobs and incomes is vague – according to whom? by how much? The cited source is not a critique of emissions trading, and I think that it has been misused. I've deleted the sentence.

Most of the criticisms have focused on the carbon market created through investment in Kyoto Mechanisms. Criticism of cap-and-trade emissions trading has generally been more limited to lack of credibility in the first phase of the EU ETS.[85]

The word "most" is dubious. I know of other criticisms of emissions trading that aren't mentioned in the article. Who has has actually measured the number of criticisms? To me "most" seems to be unjustified. The second sentence is unclear. I've rewritten this as:

According to the Transnational Institute (n.d.), carbon trading has had a "disastrous track record." The effectiveness of the EU ETS was criticized, and it was argued that the CDM had routinely favoured "environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects."

I think this is more appropriate since these are points-of-view, rather than matters of fact.

Critics argue that emissions trading does little to solve pollution problems overall, since groups that do not pollute sell their conservation to the highest bidder. Overall reductions would need to come from a sufficient reduction of allowances available in the system.

The whole point of cap and trade is that the cap is set at a sufficiently low level. The first sentence simply does not make sense. The IPCC reports make it clear that emissions trading can be used to reduce emissions. The fact that you can trade permits does not undermine the effectiveness of the system.

I've revised the other paragraphs to more closely match the source material. Also, I thought that it was better to clearly attribute arguments to particular people. Since this article is too long, I've moved some of the criticisms to the carbon emission trading article. Enescot (talk) 04:47, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Good points. Good edits. Keep it up. Mrfebruary (talk) 11:11, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

References

Clarify "Issued"

I've added a "clarify" tag to the word "issued" in the first paragraph -- this is easily the most confusing and non-obvious aspects of carbon trading. How does a government decide how many credits ought to be issued (for free, I assume) to each entity before trading begins? Indeed, most questions about emissions trading boil down to this very question. For example, if an auction is used, and the auction is efficient, economics would predict that no trades would take place post-auction (the occurrence of such trades would imply that the auction had been improper) -- making the whole concept of "cap and trade" actually mean "cap via auction". I don't mean any of this as criticism. But, as Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, I think it's failing to fulfill it's job here by dodging the most policy-critical aspect of the issue. I think simply writing "issue" does the reader an injustice. AshtonBenson (talk) 23:07, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I hope you don't mind that I have had an attempt to clarify the issue over "issue". I have used the phrase 'allocate or sell' permits. And I have added a reference to Stavins (2001) http://www.rff.org/documents/RFF-DP-01-58.pdf Yes, the issue of "grandfathering" vs "Auctioning" is extensively discussed in the economics literature, but can only really be very much summarised in the introduction. Mrfebruary (talk) 11:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

External links

I've revised the section on external links. In my view, the previous list of links was too long and generally of poor quality. Most of the links I've moved to the sub-article on carbon emission trading#External links. Since this is an important top-level article, I think that only the highest quality links should be included.

Links moved to carbon emission trading:

• Australasian Emissions Trading Forum
• "The Making of a Market-Minded Environmentalist", article by Fred Krupp in Strategy+Business (registration req'd) that articulates some of the reasoning and history behind emissions trading in California
• The Stern Review on the economics of climate change - Chapters 14 and 15 have extensive discussions on emission trading schemes and carbon taxes
• Carbon Trading - How it works and why it fails, published November 2009 by Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation: A booklet on various Emissions Trading Schemes (CDM, REDD, ETS) with case studies from Indonesia, Brazil, Thailand and India.
• Chandler: More Flexibility Needed for Effective Emissions Cap-and-Trade Policy Council on Foreign Relations
• Green Structured Products are likely to Proliferate piece by Edmund Parker and Nicole Purin, Mayer Brown, published in Financial News, 3 December 2007
• Arnaud Brohe: Carbon Markets, Earthscan

Links deleted:

• Emissions trading: The carbon game news@nature.com November 17, 2004

This link doesn't work.

• Ministers know emissions trading is a red herring and won't work, by George Monbiot, The Guardian, December 19, 2006
• Carry On Polluting - Comment and analysis piece by Larry Lohmann, published in New Scientist magazine on the 2 December 2006
• Ways Forward - Chapter 5 of the book, "Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power", published October 2006 by Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Durban Group for Climate Justice and The Corner House.

There are already lots of criticisms of carbon trading included in this article and the sub-article on carbon emission trading#Criticisms. It therefore makes sense to limit the number of links to articles critical of emissions trading.

• EU shows carbon trading is not cutting emissions

The main article on the EU ETS gives generous coverage to critical views on that ETS. This link is therefore unnecessary.

To make another point, I think that an encyclopedia should concentrate on having the best sources. The serious studies on emissions trading, e.g., the IPCC report, explain that it is an effective way to reduce emissions. I think that this is another reason why the number of links to criticisms of ETS's should be limited. I mean this in the sense of poorly-reasoned criticisms, rather than sensible criticisms, which of course do exist.

Links added:

• Emissions Trading and CDM – International Energy Agency website
• Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development website

Further reading:

• Chichilnisky, C. and G. Heal, ed. (2000). "Environmental Markets: Equity and Efficiency". Print version: Columbia University Press, New York, Chichester, West Sussex. Web version: Graciela Chichilnisky's website. Retrieved 2010-05-12.
• IEA (2005). "Act Locally, Trade Globally- Emissions Trading for Climate Policy". International Energy Agency (IEA), Head of Publications Service, 9 rue de la Fédération, 75739 Paris Cedex 15, France. p. 236. Retrieved 2010-05-12.
• Norregaard, J. and V. Reppelin-Hill (1 January 2000). "Taxes and Tradable Permits as Instruments for Controlling Pollution: Theory and Practice. Working Paper No. 00/13". International Monetary Fund, Fiscal Affairs Department. Retrieved 2010-05-12.
• Reinaud, J. and C. Philibert (22 November 2007). "Emissions trading: trends and prospects". International Energy Agency website. p. 43. Retrieved 2010-05-12.

Enescot (talk) 05:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Voluntary Carbon Market

There is no section on the voluntary carbon market, which is a part of emission trading/carbon markets. Could add such a paragraph but have a COI.

If anybody volunteers to double check, I´ll put a paragraph in here first.

TimS TimS (talk) 15:23, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:36, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Emissions trading → Cap and trade — Cap and trade: 461 Emissions trading: 247 on Google Books. If they are the same thing then it should be moved. Marcus Qwertyus 21:48, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. Is this an WP:ENGVAR issue? Don't know enough about the subject to be sure but as an Englishman I've not heard the term cap and trade and the google book results also suggest that the term emissions trading is more common outside the US. Dpmuk (talk) 22:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose First of all, see Wikipedia:Google searches and numbers; though this isn't a matter of notability, I think it's still relevant. Secondly, I believe "emissions trading" is the proper term, while "cap and trade" is a colloquialism, and somewhat politically charged. Third, as the previous commenter makes clear, "cap and trade" is an American colloquialism, and this move would contribute to systemic bias. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:53, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• The creator of this article User:Ed_Poor is American so the English variant to use is American. I took care to make the search results as accurate as possible. After you type in your search term you get an imaginary number of hits based on an algorithm a first-grade dropout wrote in a psych ward. This number is outrageously inaccurate. To get to the real number of pages you must flip to the last result. It is still not 100% accurate but it's the best solution I've found. Marcus Qwertyus 23:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• Interesting... but Uncle Ed is also the one who initially chose to call the article emissions trading [1], so that argument seems to cut both ways. No change of vote (below). Andrewa (talk) 11:56, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose "cap and trade" is a subset of "emissions trading" so it is not appropriate to rename the page "cap and trade". Mrfebruary (talk) 00:32, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. No reason to change the scope of the article, emissions trading is a good topic, and the terms are not synonymous. Andrewa (talk) 11:51, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Ditto the last two arguments. Jack B108 (talk) 15:31, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - technically neither of them are accurate! But ET is more acceptable. In full it should be Emission Allowance Trading. The first system to be implemented was the US EPA's "Cap & Trade system" for SOx, see the EPA site. But when it was rolled out internationally they all agreed on Emissions Allowance Trading at the UN, including the US, shortened to Emission trading, and subsequently rolled out as the EU ETS. The Californian ARB refers to both Cap and Trade and "Emissions Trading Program". Ephebi (talk) 17:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Environmental Deficit

Does anyone see anything structurally wrong with our way of curbing pollution? I understand that economic incentives are the only realistic way to influence businesses and their practices, but are we not treating the entire issue as if effective pollution standards are something to be bought and sold, allowing those with the most clout to continue on unhindered?

Tell me (and I ask this with complete sincerity) is this not a common criticism? Because it seemed like an intuitive direction for the entire debate to go. 70.112.17.74 (talk) 04:28, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Removed misleading and non-NPOV statement

" The big Republican wins in the November 2010 U.S. Congressional election have further reduced the chances of a climate bill being adopted during President Barack Obama's first term." (emphasis was mine) Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20021609-54.html

This statement is inaccurate inappropriate on several levels:

1) Per the article's (current) opening sentence, emissions trading is a pollution issue. Climate change is mentioned later, as a possible benefit if emissions trading is successful. Whether this benefit is real is a separate question, covered heavily elsewhere. So the statement regarding "climate legislation" is far broader than the subject of this article.

2) If one goes to the source article cited, the opposition was to many of President Obama's ideas, including emissions taxes, subsidies or government-guaranteed loans to "green" energy sources, etc., not merely to emissions trading. Again, "any (alleged) climate bill" is different from "emissions trading".

Staying NPOV myself, a properly-sourced statement, from a NPOV source, regarding political opposition to emissions trading itself, which is in fact the topic of this article, would be appropriate. Unimaginative Username (talk) 03:58, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

RGGI needs more detail

The RGGI in the northeastern U.S. has a one-sentence mention, but since it is now a functioning emissions trading system, is the only one in the U.S., and (I think) is the first system in the world to use auctioning of permits, it should have a few more descriptive sentences and probably its own heading, as well as a link to the wiki article on it.

Rkarapin (talk) 16:27, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Cap and trade not identical with emissions trading

Cap and trade here is used as another name for emissions trading. However:

Are all emissions trading programs basically the same? A: There are three basic types of emission trading programs: cap and trade, project-based, and rate-based. All three use trading to provide incentives for companies to lower their emissions. - US EPA: Are all emissions trading programs basically the same

--Chriswaterguy talk 00:46, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Price versus Quantities...

   "In contrast, an emission tax is a price instrument because it fixes the price while the emission level is allowed to vary according to economic activity. A major drawback of an emission tax is that the environmental outcome (e.g. a limit on the amount of emissions) is not guaranteed. On one hand, a tax will remove capital from the industry, suppressing possibly useful economic activity, but conversely, the polluter will not need to hedge as much against future uncertainty since the amount of tax will track with profits. The burden of a volatile market will be borne by the controlling (taxing) agency rather than the industry itself, which is generally less efficient. An advantage is that, given a uniform tax rate and a volatile market, the taxing entity will not be in a position to pick "winners and losers" and the opportunity for corruption will be less."

This paragraph could be a lot clearer if it mentioned that pollution is an external diseconomy. If the diseconomies produced by an industry are greater than the profits, it cannot be "useful economic activity." If they are less, the industry can attract capital to replace the funds lost to taxes.

What does it mean that "the burden of a volatile market will be borne by the controlling (taxing) agency rather than the industry itself"? What burden is that?

Is the claim being made that government is "generally less efficient" than business? That's an opinion, not a general truth. Or is the claim that volatility introduces inefficiency? If changes in demand for the primary product or changes in pollution control technology are causing that volatility, doesn't a tax make for less overall volatility than cap-and-trade? Doesn't less volatility make for more reliable planning and therefore more efficiency?

How does a cap and trade make the regulating entity pick winners and losers? Don't both cap-and-trade and taxation apply to everybody, subject to possibly justifiable exemptions (i.e., small firms with a high cost of controlling emissions)?

How is the opportunity for corruption less with a tax?

"Assuming no corruption and assuming that the controlling agency and the industry are equally efficient at adapting to volatile market conditions, the best choice depends on the sensitivity of the costs of emission reduction, compared to the sensitivity of the benefits (i.e., climate damage avoided by a reduction) when the level of emission control is varied."

I'm not sure what this means, but I suspect it means that a pollution tax risks failing to reduce pollution at all , while cap-and-trade risks the consequences of setting caps higher than what is appropriate initially. It is also true that a pollution tax risks imposing costs higher than the negative value of the pollution and so does cap-and-trade. It seems to me the level the tax or cap is set at is more important than which method is used.

If a pollution tax is initially set high, ultimate targets can be reached sooner. The same applies to caps being set low. Doing either approaches the effects of absolute controls, with their consequent spikes in demand for control technologies and possible reduction of supply for the primary product along with enforcement difficulties.

There is an ideological objection to cap-and-trade in that the polluter is in effect given ownership of a right to pollute.

Jdbickner (talk) 20:57, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

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"Public Opinion" Section

The "Public Opinion" section is biased junk, fix it. "Strongly support" is 52% apparently, according to the cited reference. Get your opinions out of reference materials. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.50.8.105 (talk) 14:01, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

German language version

There is also a German version of this article, it's here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissionsrechtehandel Unfortunately I was unable to add this link myself, hence posting here in case anybody else comes along. 212.201.44.243 (talk) 10:46, 3 March 2015 (UTC)MR

Criticism ~= Comparison to other approaches

It seems there is much overlap between those two topics, as well as the content of the two sections. I think we should unite them as "Criticism and comparison to other approaches". Pgan002 (talk) 08:27, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

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Is emissions trading the same as cap-and-trade?

According to Google's dictionary I searched up on Google: Emissions trading = a system by which countries and organizations receive permits to produce a specified amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which they may trade with others. Cap-and-trade = a system for controlling carbon emissions and other forms of atmospheric pollution by which an upper limit is set on the amount a given business or other organization may produce but which allows further capacity to be bought from other organizations that have not used their full allowance.

Isn't the definition for both different? Please clarify on this; thanks! Fazley01 (talk) 04:21, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

References

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References

Link 51 does not take you to the information provided, rather, the link takes you to a news page that does not indicate where the information was found. Furthermore, the information cannot be verified as being biased or not as the actual webpage and its information is missing. Dtanizak (talk) 03:05, 8 November 2017 (UTC) Dtanizak (talk)

Add More Detail To The Section On Carbon Market

In the section on Carbon Market, there is no mention of the driving of innovation through the process of Carbon Taxation. This should be mentioned in the section on the Carbon Market because it was stated in the Kyoto Protocol as a way to "provide additional incentives for the private sector and the research community to drive innovation and develop competitive and clean technologies for the future." Dtanizak (talk) 03:16, 8 November 2017 (UTC) Dtanizak (talk)

Volatile Organic Compounds

There seems to be a serious lack of content in this section. I would suggest adding more information on what a VOC is and what it does to the environment. Dtanizak (talk) 01:36, 9 November 2017 (UTC) Dtanizak (talk)

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Carbon trading platforms list

Which online trading platforms exist to convert carbon credits (CER’s, ...) to actual currency (crypto or regular). I currently only know of one: Nori.com Add info to section on this page, redirect from List of carbon credit trading platforms --Genetics4good (talk) 16:32, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

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Water Quality Trading

I note there is no Wikipedia article on water quality trading, or effluent trading. Should this topic ("Water Quality Trading") be a sub-section of the Emissions trading article ? (though strictly speaking "emissions trading" applies to air pollution, while "effluent trading" is the term that applies to water pollution). Or, should it be a separate Wikipedia article ? Nkings12 (talk) 18:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

It should be a separate article. JArthur1984 (talk) 18:43, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Ensure minimal overlap with carbon emissions trading

The way I understand this article is that its focus is on emissions trading in general but NOT about the carbon emissions trading as that is covered at carbon emissions trading, and we don't want more overlap than necessary. The hatnote also explains this. I noticed that you, User:Hedgehoque made a very large edit here in 2021. You said in the edit summary: "big exchange with Carbon emission trading: exported all carbon / climate related paragraphs as requested, imported economic theory". (as requested where?) So this conforms with my way of thinking for this article, right? I think what has happened since then is that other users keep adding content back in that should rather be at the carbon emissions trading article. So we need to tidy this up a bit. EMsmile (talk) 10:24, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I've just changed a whole bunch of redirects that were redirecting to this article to rather redirect to carbon emissions trading, for example anything to do with "cap and trade" or "emissions trading". My reasoning is that in current usage, emissions trading is mainly used for the carbon emissions trading and far less often for the other pollutants. So readers and potential editors are more likely to want to go to carbon emissions trading. You can also see in the pageviews how the views for emissions trading have gone done and those for carbon emissions trading have gone up, see here. EMsmile (talk) 13:37, 19 September 2023 (UTC)