Market Forces

Correcting the maths of the “50 to 1 Project”

By / Bio / Published: November 1, 2013

(This post first appeared on Climate 411.)

A nine-minute video, released earlier this fall, argues that climate mitigation is 50 times more expensive than adaptation. The claims are based on calculations done by Christopher Monckton. We analyzed the accompanying “sources and maths” document. In short, the author shows a disconcerting lack of understanding of climate science and economics:

  1. Fundamental misunderstanding of basic climate science: Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) were at around 280 parts per million (ppm).[i] One of the most commonly stated climate policy goals is to keep concentrations below 450 ppm CO2. Monckton, oddly, adds 280 and 450 to get to 730 ppm as the goal of global stabilization efforts, making all the rest of his calculations wildly inaccurate.
  2. Prematurely cutting off analysis after ten years: Monckton calculates the benefits of the carbon tax over a ten-year time horizon. That is much too short to see the full effects of global warming or of the policy itself. Elevated carbon levels persist for hundreds to thousands of years.[ii]
  3. Erroneously applying Australian “cost-effectiveness” calculation to the world: This may be the most troubling aspect from an economist’s point of view. Monckton first calculates the effect of the Australia-only tax on global temperatures, which is unsurprisingly low, as Australia accounts for only 1.2% of world emissions. Next, he calculates the tax’s resulting “cost-effectiveness” — defined as the Australian tax influencing global temperatures. No surprise once again, that influence is there, but Australia alone can’t solve global warming for the rest of us. Then, Monckton takes the Australia-only number and scales it to mitigate 1ºC globally, resulting in a purported cost of “$3.2 quadrillion,” which he claims is the overall global “mitigation cost-effectiveness.” But this number simply represents the cost of avoiding 1ºC of warming by acting in Australia alone. Monckton has re-discovered the fact that global warming is a global problem! The correct calculation for a globally applied tax would be to calculate cost-effectiveness on a global level first. If Australia’s carbon price were to be applied globally, it would cut much more pollution at a much lower cost. And that, of course, is very much the hope. Australia, California, and the European Union are called “climate leaders” for a reason. Others must follow.

What’s the real cost of cutting carbon? The U.S. government’s estimate of the cost of one ton of CO2 pollution released today is about $40.[iii] That’s also the optimal price to make sure that each of us is paying for our own climate damages. Any policy with a lower (implied) carbon price—including the Australian tax—easily passes a benefit-cost test.

With all due respect Lord Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, your maths are way off.

[i] “Summary for Policymakers,” IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group I (2013).

[ii] Results differ across scenarios, but a rough rule of thumb suggests that approximately 70% of the ‘peak enhancement level’ over the preindustrial level of 280 ppm perseveres after 100 years of zero emissions, while approximately 40% of the ‘peak enhancement level’ over the preindustrial level of 280 ppm persevered after 1,000 years of zero emissions (Solomon, Susan, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Reto Knutti and Pierre Friedlingstein, “Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 6 (2009): 1704-1709). Note that this refers to the net increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the exact molecule. Archer, David, Michael Eby, Victor Brovkin, Andy Ridgwell, Long Cao, Uwe Mikolajewicz, Ken Caldeira et al. “Atmospheric lifetime of fossil fuel carbon dioxide.” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 37 (2009): 117-134 discusses these two often confused definitions for carbon’s ‘lifetime,’ and concludes that 20-40% of excess carbon levels remain hundreds to thousands of years (“2-20 centuries”) after it is emitted. Each carbon dioxide molecule has a lifetime of anywhere between 50 to 200 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Overview of Greenhouse Gases: Carbon Dioxide Emissions.” The precise number is under considerable scientific dispute and surprisingly poorly understood. (Inman, Mason, “Carbon is forever,” Nature Reports Climate Change 20 November 2008)

[iii] The precise value presented in Table 1 of the Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order 12866 for a ton of carbon dioxide emitted in 2015, using a 3% social discount rate increased is $38. For 2020, the number is $43; for 2030, the number increases to $52. All values are in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars. For a further exploration of this topic, see Nordhaus, William D. The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World. Yale University Press (2013) as only one of the latest examples summarizing this kind of analysis. Nordhaus concludes that the optimal policy, one that maximizes net benefits to the planet, would spend about 3% of global GDP.

Many thanks to Michelle Ho for excellent research assistance.

Also posted in Climate science, Politics / Leave a comment

Why does no one in Thailand recycle, Bangkok is a polluted mess, yet everyone uses CFLs?

By / Bio / Published: March 19, 2013

Few Thais recycle, no one bikes, plastic bags are everywhere and Bangkok is afflicted by gridlock and pollution. So you might say that, in general, Thais behave more like citizens of a rapidly emerging economy than the typical Brooklyn environmentalist.

Why, then, does virtually every home use efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Americans and Europeans needed a ban on incandescent bulbs to make the switch. Not so the Thais, where you can still buy cheaper, more inefficient incandescent bulbs at the corner store.

Was it the influence of a higher authority? Thais famously revere their 85-year-old King, the world’s longest-reigning head of state, who happens to be an environmentalist.

The answer is, mostly, no.

Continue reading at EDF Voices.

Posted in International / Leave a comment

Geoengineering: ignore economics and governance at your peril

By / Bio / Published: October 31, 2012

Cross-posted from Climate 411.

How serious is global warming? Here’s one indication: the first rogue entrepreneurs have begun testing the waters on geoengineering, as Naomi Klein laments in her must-read New York Times op-ed.

Sadly, Klein misses two important points.

First, it’s not a question of if but when humanity will be compelled to use geoengineering, unless we change course on our climate policies (or lack thereof). Second, all of this calls for more research and a clear, comprehensive governance effort on the part of governments and serious scientists – not a ban of geoengineering that we cannot and will not adhere to. (See point number one.)

Saying that we ought not to tinker with the planet on a grand scale – by attempting to create an artificial sun shield, for example – won’t make it so. Humanity got into this mess thanks to what economists call the “free rider” effect. All seven billion of us are free riders on the planet, contributing to global warming in various ways but paying nothing toward the damage it causes. No wonder it’s so hard to pass a sensible cap or tax on carbon pollution. Who wants to pay for something that they’re used to doing for free – never mind that it comes at great cost to those around them?

It gets worse: Turns out the same economic forces pushing us to do too little on the pollution front are pushing us toward a quick, cheap fix – a plan B.

Enter the Strangelovian world of geoengineering – tinkering with the whole planet. It comes in two distinct flavors:

  • Sucking carbon out of the atmosphere;
  • Creating an artificial sun shield for the planet.

The first involves reversing some of the same processes that cause global warming in the first place. Instead of taking fossil fuels out of the ground and burning them, we would now take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bury it under ground. That sounds expensive, and it is. Estimates range from $40 to $200 and more per ton of carbon dioxide – trillions of dollars to solve the problem.

That brings us to the second, scary flavor, which David Keith, a leading thinker on geoengineering, calls “chemotherapy” for the planet. The direct price tag to create an artificial sun shield: pennies per ton of carbon dioxide. It’s the kind of intervention an island nation, or a billionaire greenfinger, could pay for.

You can see where economics enters the picture. The first form of geoengineering won’t happen unless we place a serious price on carbon pollution. The second may be too cheap to resist.

In a recent Foreign Policy essay, Harvard’s Martin Weitzman and I called the forces pushing us toward quick and dirty climate modification “free driving.” Crude attempts to, say, inject sulfur particles into the atmosphere to counter carbon dioxide already there would be so cheap it might as well be free. We are talking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That’s orders of magnitude cheaper than tackling the root cause of the problem.

Given the climate path we are on, it’s only a matter of time before this “free driver” effect takes hold. Imagine a country badly hit by adverse climate changes: India’s crops are wilting; China’s rivers are drying up. Millions of people are suffering. What government, under such circumstances, would not feel justified in taking drastic action, even in defiance of world opinion?

Once we reach that tipping point, there won’t be time to reverse warming by pursuing collective strategies to move the world onto a more sustainable growth path. Instead, speed will be of the essence, which will mean trying untested and largely hypothetical techniques like mimicking volcanoes and putting sulfur particles in the stratosphere to create an artificial shield from the sun.

That artificial sunscreen may well cool the earth. But what else might it do? Floods somewhere, droughts in other places, and a host of unknown and largely unknowable effects in between. That’s the scary prospect. And we’d be experimenting on a planetary scale, in warp speed.

That all leads to the second key point: we ought to do research in geoengineering, and do so guided by sensible governance principles adhered to be all. We cannot let research get ahead of public opinion and government oversight. The geoengineering governance initiative convened by the British Royal Society, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, and the Environmental Defense Fund is a necessary first step in the right direction.

Is there any hope in this doomsday scenario? Absolutely. Country after country is following the trend set by the European Union to institute a cap or price on carbon pollution. Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and also California are already – or will soon be – limiting their carbon pollution. India has a dollar-a-ton coal tax. China is experimenting with seven regional cap-and-trade systems.

None of these is sufficient by itself. But let’s hope this trend expands –fast – to include the really big emitters like the whole of China and the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, and others. Remember, the question is not if the “free driver” effect will kick in as the world warms. It’s when.

Also posted in Climate science, Politics / Leave a comment

Australia’s landmark legislation will put price on carbon pollution, create world’s second-largest carbon-price system

By / Bio / Published: November 9, 2011

By Jennifer Andreassen, originally posted on our Climate Talks blog.

As expected, Australia’s upper house of Parliament voted yesterday to adopt a carbon price, which will compel Australia’s largest polluters, beginning July 1, 2012, to pay for their carbon pollution.

Australia will have the largest carbon-price system in the world outside Europe's, after its upper house approved the Clean Energy Future package of bills Nov. 8. The package of bills aims to cut emissions from coal-dependent Australia 80% by 2050 from 2000 levels.

The legislation’s passage will give Australia, which has the highest per capita emissions of any developed country in the world and uses even more coal than the United States, the largest carbon-price system in the world outside of the European Union. (That is, the largest outside the EU until California’s program takes effect in January 2013; California last month approved the largest, first-ever economy-wide carbon market in North America, which could eventually link to other sub-national, national and regional markets around the world.)

EDF applauds Australia on its leadership on the vitally important problem of climate change. This vote is another indication that more and more countries around the world – with the U.S. being a notable exception – are taking climate change seriously. The legislation also backs Australia’s international commitment to reduce emissions by between 5 and 25 per cent by 2020 from 2000 levels.

The Clean Energy Future Package

The Clean Energy Future package is made up of 18 bills that will assign a price to carbon starting July 1, 2012 and cut Australia’s emissions 5% below 2000 levels by 2020 (though the target can be strengthened based on science or international action), and 80% below 2000 levels by 2050.

Australia’s 400-500 largest emitters will be covered by the carbon price, which will take the form of a fixed price (starting at A$23 per metric ton) for the first three years, and shift to a carbon market emissions trading system in 2015.

As we mentioned when Australia’s lower house passed the clean energy legislation on October 11, the Clean Energy Future package will shift Australia’s energy towards cleaner and renewable sources by:

  1. Placing a price on carbon.
  2. Creating a market-based system with plans to link it with ‘credible international carbon markets or emissions trading schemes in other countries’ – like New Zealand and Europe – after 2015.
  3. Giving a big boost to renewable energy research and development and deployment through a new $10 billion financing vehicle, the “Clean Energy Finance Corporation.”

(The Southern Cross Climate Coalition has some more details on the legislation in its analysis, as does Natural Resources Defense Council’s Jake Schmidt in his post Congrats Australia! Law passed which will require mandatory carbon pollution reductions for major polluters.)

Climate groups in Australia welcomed the passage of the laws, as did:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who told reporters:

Today we have made history. … This is about what’s right for the nation’s future.

Deutsche Bank Australia carbon analyst Tim Jordan, who said:

This is a very positive step for the global effort on climate change. It shows that the world’s most emissions-intensive advanced economy is prepared to use a market mechanism to cut carbon emissions in a low-cost way.

CEO of The Climate Institute John Connor, who said:

This is a vital cog in Australia’s pollution reduction machinery with the potential to help cut around 1 billion tonnes of carbon pollution from the atmosphere between next year and 2020.

This vote means Australia now brings greater credibility going into international climate negotiations starting later this month in South Africa. It also puts wind in the sails of other jurisdictions about to introduce, or considering, emissions trading schemes which similarly price and limit carbon pollution.

The G20 Cannes Action Plan for Growth and Jobs even highlights the Australian legislation as an example of how members will “enhance competition and reduce distortions” in its plan to create “sustained, broad-based reforms to boost confidence, raise global output and create jobs.”

What’s next for Australia

Now, the Government moves into implementation mode, which means it will take to:

  • Establishing new institutions, including the Climate Change Authority (to recommend on future emissions targets); the Clean Energy Finance Corporation; and the Clean Energy Regulatory to oversee the market;
  • Finalizing contracts next year to close 2000 MW of brown coal power generation;
  • Working with New Zealand and EU officials on linking schemes after 2015.

Linkages to international carbon markets that are built into the system will also see Australia become a key player in the international offset market.

And Australian officials will be able to hold their heads high at the UN climate conference in Durban at the end of this year, as they promote their joint proposal with Norway for a roadmap to a 2015 global climate treaty.

Also posted in Cap and Trade Watch, Politics / Leave a comment

Carbon trading grows up

By / Bio / Published: January 28, 2011

Cross-posted from Reuters AlertNet.

When someone robs a bank, nobody challenges the legitimacy of banks. They suggest instead that the bank find better security. Why should carbon markets be any different?

Wednesday last week the European Commission (EC) discovered cyber thefts of carbon allowances valued at around €30 million from accounts in a handful of member states. It promptly halted all trading in its nearly €130 billion/year market until the holes could be plugged, accounts could be cleared, the stolen allowances could be traced by their unique identifying numbers, and culprits could be identified.

The fact that some trading registries are apparently less secure than your Facebook account is a clear problem and points to serious underinvestment in market infrastructure and security.

It certainly does not call into question, however, the idea of carbon trading, although some opponents of carbon markets have taken that step. These people range from outright climate deniers—those who can’t even admit we have a global warming problem—to those who believe that markets aren’t the most efficient way of addressing climate change, to those who can’t capitalize on the carbon market’s opportunities.

Let’s be clear: Putting a firm limit on carbon pollution, and providing polluters with flexibility in determining how to reduce pollution—including through transparent trading of pollution allowances—is fundamentally the best way to combat global warming pollution.

This basic fact is not changed by a €30 million theft of carbon credits that might have been prevented through a €10 thousand investment in security software and better computer hardware. Although not perfect, markets are the most rational and efficient way of allocating resources toward filling a specific need. Every stock exchange on the planet faces attempted cyber attacks, and most are well equipped to deal with them.

A day after the theft was discovered, the EC released a wholly separate, long-awaited decision to stop accepting pollution credits generated by destroying trifluoromethane, HFC-23, and nitrous oxide. Opponents of carbon markets seized on this announcement as further evidence that carbon trading markets aren’t working.

But actually, the EC’s decision to stop accepting these credits is the right move. HFC-23 was originally developed as an alternative to ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons. HFC-23 is a potent global warming gas, and destroying it helps the climate.

However, trading in HFC-23 credits creates perverse incentives. With a high enough price for carbon credits, it could make economic sense to build factories that produce HFC-23 for the sole purpose of destroying the gas and collecting credit for doing so. A better way for dealing with HFC-23 would be to subsume it under the successful Montreal Protocol, which is working to repair the hole in the ozone layer.

The coincidence of the EC’s decision to stop trading HFC-23 credits and the temporary suspension of trading on the heels of the carbon allowance theft, gave opponents of trading the opportunity to launch a two-pronged critique of carbon markets. But barring HFC-23 credits from entering the EU system can only be applauded—it’s entirely in the spirit of putting a firm upper limit on carbon pollution.

These two events highlight the carbon opportunity for the EC going forward. The emissions trading system has already proven its worth as the centerpiece of European efforts to cut global warming pollution. By improving the technical security of its trading program, the EC can assure investors that no more emissions allowances will be purloined.

And by closing its carbon market to credits from one-off HFC-23-type projects of dubious environmental value, and instead linking the EU market with jurisdictions that establish high-quality cap-and-trade systems, the EC can strengthen its own market and challenge others who are developing similar policies—from New Zealand to Tokyo to California, and beyond—to follow suit.

In the end, that’s all that counts—and the only thing the planet truly notices.

Also posted in Cap and Trade Watch, Politics / Leave a comment

Not the U.S. or China, but the U.S., China and the Planet

By / Bio / Published: January 21, 2011

One of the pleasures of my job is having a slew of superbly qualified prospective interns knock on our doors. Yesterday, I interviewed someone who graduated at the top of his class at Renmin University in Beijing.

There have been plenty of column inches written on “China versus the US,” including when it comes to green jobs and clean tech. So,

Who’s going to come out ahead, China or the United States?

It took him nary a second to nail this one:

China, relatively. Both China and the U.S. in an absolute sense.

That’s the textbook answer.

The atmosphere wins

China has a lot of catching up to do. Comparatively, it will clearly gain on the U.S. But trade also has advantages for both parties involved. That’s why we trade in the first place.

The planet emerges as a winner as well. It doesn’t care where a ton of carbon gets emitted or where it gets reduced—just that reductions happen.

If China produces cheaper solar panels, we get fewer emissions overall. The planet wins. China wins. What about the U.S.?

What about jobs?

If you are among the 800 workers in Devens, MA, who last week found out that Evergreen Solar was moving its plant to China, you will feel very differently about free trade right about now. The textbook economic answer would say that the move can still make everyone better off: compensate the losers through portions of the gains from the winners, and everybody wins once again.

This situation, of course, is the moment when you throw out your textbook and think about the full consequences.

As a result of the move, solar panels will likely become even cheaper for everyone, enabling many more to buy them. Still, the Devens 800 will not be among the people lining up to buy cheaper solar panels.

What can they do? What should the U.S. do as a matter of policy?

First, we need to realize that the rules of trade still apply. China has lots of cheap labor. It does and will continue to manufacture many products sold in the U.S. Solar panels are no different.

But that’s still not a satisfying answer, nor is it the whole story—not for manufacturing itself, and not for the clean tech industry overall.

How to keep clean tech jobs in the U.S.

To get to the bottom of this, we need to look at the full supply chain for solar panels. This, of course, oversimplifies things, but we can split the entire process into three distinct buckets: inventing, producing, and installing.

Right now, the U.S. is inventing, China is producing, and it is the one installing the resulting solar panels domestically at massive scale.

The U.S. ought to do everything to make sure it keeps inventing clean tech products. That means a concerted push to fund basic research and development. But R&D subsidies alone won’t do.

Many mentions of “R&D” add a second “D” for deployment. Government support can get things going, but large-scale deployment of clean technologies won’t happen through subsidies alone (at least not without bankrupting the government).

So how do you get deployment up to scale?

Deployment clearly needs to be driven by demand. That’s where a cap on carbon pollution, with its resulting price on carbon, comes in. A cap helps create a more level playing field for solar and other renewable energy sources relative to fossil energy and, therefore, creates the necessary demand. (There are alternatives, like simply requiring a certain percentage of power to come from solar, but none is quite as cheap and flexible as a cap.)

Made in USA?

Moreover, cheap labor and cheaper production facilities may be a decisive factor, but they are not the only reason companies consider when choosing where to locate. There are many more, but let’s focus on two: intellectual property (IP) protection and being close to where the demand is.

The U.S. has a leg up on China in terms of IP protection. That’s, in part, why the U.S. (still) leads on R&D. It’s also a clear draw for some companies to locate their production facilities in the U.S.

Another oft-cited reason is to be close to consumers. That’s once again where the importance of the second “D”—deployment—comes in. The more demand there is for solar panels in the U.S., the more companies will locate their production plants in the U.S. as well. The case of First Solar supplying panels for Wal-Mart is a prime example. (Note that this is distinct from cheaper production leading to more demand in the first place.)

In the end, though, we must also be clear that jobs will be different in the new, cleaner economy. We will need fewer gas station attendants. Many other jobs will thrive. Underlying trade forces will mean that China may well be producing many of the solar panels sold globally. Assembling, installing, and maintaining solar panels in the U.S. will require plenty of skilled labor. And none of these jobs can be exported.

California leading

With the right policies in place, the U.S. will keep inventing. It will also create thousands of jobs dedicated to deployment. China will play a major role in producing, but even there, smart environmental policy can only help.

California is taking the lead with its Million Solar Roofs initiative, creating many a job assembling, installing, and maintaining solar panels. That initiative, though, still has to be paid for by tax dollars, and it won’t go on forever.

That’s where the cap on carbon kicks in. California is bound to stay ahead of the rest of the U.S. with its ambitious cap-and-trade system that starts on January 1, 2012 and the resulting market signal that says that clean tech pays in the U.S. as well.

Consider the just-released Next 10 report, Many Shades of Green, that found that in the most recent observable 12-month period (January 2008 – January 2009) jobs in the green sector grew more than three times faster than total employment in California. (Of course, all of this always comes with the warning that green sector jobs are still a small fraction of total jobs—much like IT jobs were a minuscule part of overall employment in the early 1980s.)

One of our internship spot may well end up going to a Chinese student, but that, too, can only be good for the planet—making a small contribution to help train the next generation of Chinese environmental leaders. And rest assured, there are plenty more open job positions (including one for a post-doc working with our economic team, open to anyone with a Princeton affiliation).

Also posted in California, Markets 101, Politics / Leave a comment