In today's The Guardian is an article about an updated report from PriceWaterhouse Coopers that quotes John Hawksworth, PWC's head of macroeconomics, as saying that, "the carbon price that would be needed to be set to encourage the switch away from carbon towards cleaner energy sources was around $40 (£20) a tonne, close to where it is now. 'It does not need to go much higher than it is now [in Europe] to achieve the sort of carbon reductions we are talking about.'" PWC was looking at cutting long term emissions in developed countries by about 80%.
That $40 a tonne is the Green Shift's target price on carbon by the fourth year. Now these numbers are uncertain and will probably change, but the basic point I want to make is that when people say that Stephane Dion can't tell them what amount of greenhouse gas emissions reductions will result from the Green Shift, the answer perhaps should be, "If we [kick the C's out and] start now, the Green Shift may accomplish just the emissions reductions we need."
Thursday, July 3, 2008
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2 comments:
Yet in a post at Progressive Economics, you said that Layton and the NDP were just shooting blind by picking a figure of $35 a tonne.
Aha! I'm being "researched".
Well, budd campbell, I think the point is that it's one thing to set a carbon price of $40/tonne of CO2 with the goal of getting a certain amount of long term emissions reductions, and it's quite another thing to be able to claim that the result of an auction of emissions credits will result in a market clearing price of $35/tonne. In a cap and trade system, you do not pick the price of carbon. Instead you pick the total amount of emissions credits, and hope that the resulting price of carbon is not too volatile and not too extreme. I suppose there is some analysis behind the NDP claim that a price of carbon of $35/tonne will result from a certain auction process, but I have not seen it released to the public. Can you point me to it?
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