In 2005, the European Union (EU) put into place a carbon trading scheme. Prices for carbon permits promptly plunged, and have remained depressed since then. The price for a permit to emit a tonne of CO2 went from 21.59 Euros in 2005, to 17.28 in 2006, to 0.68 in 2007, to 2.16 in 2008, to 13.03 in 2009. Today, however, you will be glad to know that some academics declared the scheme a resounding success …
Say what? Here’s what Reuters News Service had to say:
(Reuters) – The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is a success and its flaws have not harmed its basic aim of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, multi-national research showed on Friday.
Experts at French state bank Caisse des Depots, the Paris-Dauphine University, the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research in the United States and University College Dublin collaborated to evaluate the scheme’s trial period, which has widely been viewed as a failure.
The EU’s flagship carbon trading scheme requires companies to buy permits for each tonne of carbon they emit. Carbon output is capped and the level is lowered year by year.
The scheme’s first trading phase ran from 2005 to 2007. Installations in the 27-nation bloc were over-allocated with carbon permits and the carbon price fell to zero.
The research concluded that although there were many problems in the first phase, they were overcome and did not hamper the scheme’s ultimate objective of reducing emissions. … SOURCE
Now, as some of you might have noticed, I’m a suspicious fellow and I like to run the numbers myself. So, what numbers should we be looking at here?
After some thought, I decided that I would look at the change from the four years prior to the institution of the carbon trading scheme (2001 through 2004), to the first four years of the scheme (2005 through 2008). [Figures for 2009 are not yet available] That would let me see if things improved or got worse.
The most logical measures to look at, it seemed to me, were per capita fuel use and CO2 emissions . (Excel spreadsheet) Using per capita figures removes the effects of population changes . If we just looked at fuel use, for example, a population increase would affect the fuel use. I didn’t want to be measuring the effect of population changes, so I used per capita figures.
Using those measures, I decided to compare the EU with the US. Their economies are of a comparable size and development. Since the US is the global CO2 pariah, and has no carbon trading scheme, that would give me a good baseline to compare with the EU performance.
Without further prologue, here are my results:
Figure 1. Percentage change from the period before the EU carbon trading scheme (average 2001-2004) to the period after the carbon trading scheme (average 2005-2008). All measurements are per capita.
By every single measure, the US has outperformed the EU. And the most telling point is that per capita, EU carbon dioxide emissions have increased since 2005 when the scheme started, while US carbon dioxide emissions have decreased. For a scheme designed to reduce emissions, that’s not good news.
The US did better by every measure than the EU, and did it without any restriction on carbon. Now perhaps some folks in a think-tank somewhere call that a whacking great success for the trading scheme … but not on my planet. Call me crazy, but my conclusion is that the EU carbon trading scheme was a failure.
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BLUE CARBON? Have you all heard of this?
Somewhat OT, but Anthony et al – just came across “blue carbon” in an article from the North Carolina Costal Federation’s spring issue of Coastal Review (“Rebuilding Marshes May Help Rebuild Our Climate”; page 12). Basically, marshes and marine organisms capture about 55% of all “biological carbon.”
The article is based on a UN report accessible at: http://www.grida.no/publications/rr/blue-carbon/
Thanks – y’all are great – have cited you many times!
Bob W.
Roger Sowell,
Your point about oil seems to be that a nation should keep it in the ground in case there is a war, because to use it today risks depleting the reserves and being without oil should a war arrive.
This is an interesting argument but has at least one flaw. It assumes that oil will remain the primary fuel of society in perpetuity. If society instead progresses to a post oil economy, all that oil becomes useless. What you then have is the opportunity lost of bringing that oil to market.
That is a huge loss. You are effectively gambling that the oil will be more valuable in the case of a war than during peace.
Roger Sowell (09:02:56)
You are changing the goalposts, Roger. Before, your claim was specifically about offshore oil, viz:
Roger Sowell (10:23:12) : edit
Now you want to talk about on-shore and near-shore fields, but you can’t revise history like that. Your claim was about offshore drilling, you have to live with it.
Next, even on a wartime footing, it will not be a fast process. There’s not a lot of deep-sea drilling rigs on the planet, and even fewer companies that build offshore oil platforms. These are huge, unwieldy, and very slow to construct even under pressure. They take months to tow into position and install. So let’s say that under a wartime footing, we could cut the time for the whole process by four. This might be achievable, although it would be difficult. That would still mean that it would take five years to get any production out of the fields.
Next, as you point out, in wartime this infrastructure (drilling ships, offshore oil platforms) is very vulnerable.
Me, I’d rather drill offshore now and get the wells on line. That way, if there is a war, we can open the taps and have oil the next day when we need it, rather than spending billions on a hurry-up program to get us oil in five years … if the Middle East decides to stop selling us oil, I want a supply ready to go.
Finally, first you said that it’s better to leave the offshore oil in the ground in case we need it in a war … then you said ” If we needed oil for a war, we have plenty” on or near shore. Make up your mind. If we have plenty of oil for a war on or near shore, there is no reason to leave the offshore oil in the ground in case of war.
tides (15:03:26) :
Dan in California (12:08:30) :
Natural gas was and is still cheap in eastern europe, Soviet nuclear tech was dangerouse. There is a great misunderstanding about economics of nuclear power as shown by your “1000 years of fuel around depending on technology” comment ehich could be said as “lets make shit up because we havn’t thought about what we have been told”. ”
I am skeptical and critical of everything I see and hear. My statement of having 1000 years of fission fuel is well documented. Most current power production reactors use Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) fuel in an open cycle. There’s about 200 years of uranium currently discovered to run those without developing new technology. Official USA government estimated reserves of coal, gas, and uranium here: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/state/SEP_MoreReserves.cfm The world has more. 🙂
The waste can be reprocessed to both reduce the volume by a factor of 5 to 10, and recover about as much fuel as was burned the first time around. The USA doesn’t reprocess nuke waste, but the UK, France, Russia, and Japan are doing that. The Koreans are working on developing reactors that burn relatively unprocessed waste. Reference here: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf81.html
Russian and US nuclear weapons are being dismantled and the High Enriched Uranium (HEU) is being blended down with Depleted Uranium (DU), which will add about 50% to the world’s resources. Reference here: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf13.html
Then, there are fast neutron reactors that are designed to “breed” more fuel than they consume. They generally make Pu 239 by neutron capture by U 238, which can generate 60 times as much fuel as burned. Several have been built and operated, but they cost more than just digging uranium out of the ground and burning it in a once-through slow neutron light water reactor. Reference here: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf09.html
Then, there is the relatively easy change from uranium to thorium fission. Thorium is more common than uranium. A primer on that is here: http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/
But I am not just a fan of clean, safe, reliable utility-scale power that can be purchased by just writing a check. I have personally installed a few hundred watts of off-grid solar panels, and plan a few KW on the next house I build. But solar PV power is not for everyone because the cost is still 5 to 10 times higher than burning gas or coal. Lower cost, utility scale solar power is being developed by private industry. It’s only about 3 times the cost of burning fossils. Nice YouTube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDBFdbKcl84
And I’m not even going to start a discussion on polywell fusion. Sorry about going this far off-topic.
TYRE INDUSTRY VICTIM TO CARBON TAX
Bridgestone Tyres falls victim to K-Rudds carbon tax, announced the closure of all its manufacturing plants in Australia, throwing 600 workers out of a job.
http://sa.onenation.com.au/beenleigh.htm