The UK is in a tighter spot than we find ourselves yet in regard to energy. In a way they are having to go down the path sooner that we will have to go down at some time.
[url=http://www.transitionnetwork.org/news/2011-01-24/tradeable-energy-quotas-launched-house-commons]Tradeable Energy Quotas[/url] have now been launched in their House of Commons.
TEQs is an energy rationing scheme designed to cover a nation’s whole economy within which individual adults would receive an equal per capita Entitlement of electronic TEQs units free-of-charge. Organisations the government and all other energy users would have to buy their units at a Tender or auction. The number of units issued into the economy via the weekly Entitlement and Tender would be determined by either the availability of energy resources or the national carbon budget – whichever represents the tighter constraint on the national economy at any given time.
The weekly auction would also generate a price for TEQs units and all buying and selling of units within the nation would take place at that price (which would of course fluctuate in line with demand).
The purchase of any fuel or electricity within the national economy would require the surrender of TEQs units alongside the usual monetary payment. Each TEQs unit would allow for the purchase of a set quantity of fuel or electricity. If the scheme were being used to address energy resource shortages this quantity would simply be a proportion of the total resource available. If used to implement a carbon budget it would be dependent on the lifecycle emissions associated with that energy source.
The TEQs design is based on the insight that all emissions from energy use within a national economy can be measured simply and efficiently by assigning a ‘carbon rating’ (e.g. 0.2 units per kWh or 2.3 units per litre) to fuels and electricity based on the quantity of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases generated by their production and use. Once this is established the total emissions attributable to a given purchase becomes implicit in the quantities listed as usual on invoices utility bills and till receipts.
The TEQs system simply uses this information making it unnecessary to measure carbon emissions directly or to grapple with the endless costs complexities and compromises of embodied emissions calculations and carbon labelling. This ‘carbon rating’ for fuels and energy also provides a competitive advantage to retailers of more efficiently or renewably generated energy who would not have to require their customers to surrender so
many units.
The purchase of goods other than energy would not require the surrender of TEQs units since the producers of those goods would have already surrendered units for the energy used in the production of the goods. Producers would then pass on the cost of buying these units to consumers who would simply find that certain goods (those produced in a more energy-intensive manner) cost more.