Cap and trade is stupid. It's a form of "carbon credits" designed to create a market for the likes of wall street while allowing for politics to also play a role. The simplest thing to do is TAX the carbon coming out of the ground (oil or coal) or coming into the country. This cost will automatically be passed on to whomever uses that fuel in direct proportion to how much the use. However, we continue to subsidize some carbon producers, so you can clearly see that reducing emissions is NOT the primary agenda here.
"Accounting for the damages [of unpriced externalities] conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated"<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05890.x/abstract" rel="nofollow">http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010....</a>
I actually wrote something up on indirect carbon pricing in the US yesterday.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7829683" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7829683</a><p>TL;DR<p>EU carbon is trading at $6.88/tonne. Working back from an enrollment mailer I found that TVA's green power program prices it at $42/tonne (in terms of lbs of CO2 emissions avoided by purchasing blocks of renewable generation).
When it comes to coal these efforts and those who support them seem to always make the assumption that there is nothing that can be done to make burning coal "cleaner". After working with the utilities industries (mostly natural gas industries) I can tell you with 100% certainty that more than 80% of the by products from the burning of coal, including CO2, can be removed using scrubbing technologies and filters. In many cases the cost to install these technologies are lower than the costs to convert a plant to natural gas. The problem is that EPA regulations on coal are driving the costs up (by making it harder to mine and transport) to the point where in the long run natural gas is cheaper (though get a change in the US administration and that could sway the other way again)(Edit: Which is why a lot of coal plants are being converted to natural gas). My point is that if coal didn't cost as much as it currently does (because of federal regulation) a number of technologies could be installed that would enable coal plants to continue to be used with much much less environmental impact.
What's the deal with using 2005 as the reference date for the 30% cuts? Do we not have more accurate carbon measurements since then? Is it to make the cuts seem smaller since 2014's emissions are probably bigger than 05. There must be some specific reason to pick a reference date of almost a decade ago. Any thoughts?
This is not true at all, or at least it's only true from a narrow US view of the world :<p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-31/obama-step-forward-on-carbon-undone-by-china-s-steps-back.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-31/obama-step-forward-...</a><p>And let's not get any illusions. One of the main real changes in the world that make this possible is outsourcing of production to China, where instead of a mix of oil, nuclear and coal, goods will be produced with nearly exclusively coal. Obama is not an idiot and knows this.<p>His voters seemingly are not so aware.<p>So what it should really say is something along the lines of "in an attempt to improve earbon emission numbers in the US, the EPA doubles worldwide carbon emissions, in cooperation with it's European counterpart, moving the emissions where they are not counted on his report card".
So, by 2030 even if the US cuts emissions by 30%, aren't there going to be 2-3 billion people in emerging markets moving up the economic ladder who will use a lot more energy.<p>Sure 300 million Americans are currently using a lot of energy but we're going to be much smaller part of the problem by 2030.
Does anyone know of a study on how effective such programs have been in the past (assuming it passes and isn't significantly overturned by the courts)? As in, what is the expected success rate of long-term plans of the US government (or other nations)?
Good plan. Let's build some nuclear plants.<p>Oh, wait. Not politically viable? It should be: <a href="http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html" rel="nofollow">http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...</a>
I hypothesize that with two years remaining, President Obama is again delivering big for the Futuregen 2.0 project in his home state. I mean, if he was really looking to reduce carbon emissions he might make that a priority in his dealings with China and Russia and the developing world. This is politics, not policy in my opinion.