Reconciling scientific reality with realpolitik: moving beyond carbon pricing to TEQs – an integrated, economy-wide emissions cap

Abstract

This article considers why price-based frameworks may be inherently unsuitable for delivering unprecedented global emissions reductions while retaining the necessary public and political support, and argues that it is time to instead draw on quantitybased mechanisms such as TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas). TEQs is a climate policy framework combining a hard cap on emissions with the use of market mechanisms to distribute quotas beneath that cap.

The Political Economy of Deep Decarbonization: Tradable Energy Quotas for Energy Descent Futures

“…TEQs would achieve such equitable engagement by putting a hard cap on a nation's emissions from energy use [62]. At the centre of the TEQs system is a national emission budget that sets the quantity of carbon emissions permitted in any year.…”

Intermediaries’ perspectives on the public’s role in the energy transitions needed to deliver UK climate change policy goals

“…While the scheme has received significant academic attention (e.g. Fawcett and Parag, 2010;Chamberlin et al 2015) international media coverage and political support, one key obstacle to implementation is likely to be the lack of understanding of the potential role the public could playand which TEQs could unleash. In the words of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (20083) "what is needed, urgently, is a shift in the debate away from ever-deeper and more detailed consideration of how [TEQs] could operate towards the more decisive questions of how it could be made publicly and politically acceptable."…”

“…To meet these targets the UK faces 'an urgent need for completely new energy policy across a range of areas' (UK Committee on Climate Change, 2016). It is thought by many that a reliance upon individual-level voluntary behavioural responses by the wider public can only make a limited contribution to meeting those targets (Capstick et al 2014;Shove, 2010;Capstick et al 2015;Chamberlin et al 2015). At the same time there has, to date, been political reluctance in the UK to introduce more radical top-down policies to structure emissions reduction, such as carbon taxation or personal carbon trading (Chamberlin et al 2015;Lorenzoni et al 2008).…”

Mediators and Moderators of Normative Reductionism: Towards a Testimonial Approach to Expertise in Legal Inquiry

“…This is why advocates of upstream mechanisms of dealing with climate change are also critics of the EU ETS, as there is the apprehension that the technologies of determining a price (such as secondary markets) effectively render the EU into a price rather than a quantity mechanism. 149 What this criticism unfortunately overlooks is that the clear distinction between price and quantity mechanisms is not useful in practice. The EU ETS is, in effect, a mediator that operates as a price and quantity mechanism.…”