Hub-Caps and Trade

From reading the Kopp-Pitzer paper and the Stockholm Environmental Institute’s Policy Brief, one gets a sense of the overwhelming options available to the US in regards reducing CO2 emission, specifically with cap-and-trade “schemes.” And why do I refer to them as “schemes” you ask? The answer is that that’s just what they are: “schemes.” There has been no real and concrete bi-partisan actions towards implementing one or a combination of the myriad ideas presented in the two papers. When is this to occur, one really can’t say—politics and economics prove to be semi-insurmountable hindrances to definitive actions. Yet, one point to focus on from the articles, which could prove effective in the near future is that of regulating car fuel efficiency and our transportation sector.

While a majority of the Kopp-Pitzer “Executive Summary” focused on the economic feasibility of various cap-and trade regulating mechanisms, a brief amount of time was dedicated to advances in car fuel efficiency in regards to reducing the US’s emission.

Reference: Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2009, USEPA #430-R-11-005

Starting from a purely statistical perspective, this graph from the EPA shows that the US two biggest contributors to CO2 emissions are from the production of electrical power and from transportation. We as Americans do spend an average of 100 hours commuting to our jobs alone. Therefore, any real decrease in emissions from this sector would reduce the US’s emissions greatly, overall. Of course from a logical standpoint this is known, as Kopp-Pitzer claim, “In some areas-particularly in the electricity and transportation sectors-additional policies are likely to be implemented to promote lower-carbon technologies.”

So what seems feasible to implement in the near future in regards to our transportation sector? Already, “various policies have been proposed to directly address two of the three factors that drive overall GHG emissions from this sector: the fuel-economy of new vehicles and net GHG emissions from the production and use of different transportation fuels.” This is a two-prong approach to try to deal with both the cars that consume the fuel and the production of the fuel itself. This seems to make sense, but then Kopp-Pitzer bring up the “human behavior” argument that reducing the price of the less-energy transportation does not necessarily “encourage less use…fuel-economy standards reduce the per-mile cost of driving, thus they don’t encourage consumers to use their vehicles less.” This is completely logical as well. So now there appears to be a paradox between what actions are feasible to persue and/or regulate by the federal governemnt, and what human behavior will dictate.

It is this paradox that seems to be at the heart of getting regulation policies, specifically “cap-and-trade” off the ground—there are simply tradeoffs between every action with unknowable human, economic, and political effects. It is this which makes creating policy so scary and almost impossible to implement, because then there is hypothetical navigating of unknown factors and repercussions.

However, all is not hopeless, the Stockholm Environment Institute’s report provides a small glint of light as it mentions the STATE (and not federal action!) already adopted to combat  emissions. For example, California adopted the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006 to create emissions limits and invest in green energy sources. Other old measures to curb transportation emissions include the CAFE Standards set by auto-manufacturers, of which increased their standards in 2007 to 35 mpg by a 2020 target.(<http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview.htm>)

Further positive mention is this statement by the Institute that, “The only areas of agreement are energy efficiency and energy security, for which support for high-priority treatment lies in the 60 per cent range among both Republicans and Democrats.” That further “energy efficiency, transit and high-speed rail” were among the “five largest green allocations” under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), is also greatly promising. It means that this sector is of utmost importance in aiding to reducing overall GHG emissions under a more comprehensive cap-and-trade plan (after that is hammered out one day…) Several proposals, such as the Kerry-Snowe or Sanders-Boxer, provide possible models for implementing this. (<http://www.rff.org/rff/News/Features/upload/26848_1.pdf>)

Therefore, the acknowledgement and writing of several policy proposals in regards to the large transportation sectors of the US’s GHG emissions looks promising. Once again, however, concrete bi-partisan action needs to be taken. Obviously, this is an extremely complex issue that has historically proven impossible to implement. I feel however, that if transportation emissions can be regulated first before the implementation of a concrete “cap-and-trade” mechanism, then the US could already have a better handle on their emissions by the time they must adopt such a broad regulation.

WORKS CITED

Kopp-Pitzer. “Assessing US Climate Policy Options: Executive Summary and Overview. pgs. 1-25

Stockholm Environmental Institute. “Washington Descends Deeper into Climate Gridlock, California and the States Creep Forward: Policy Brief.” <www.sei-international.org>  2010.

Graph courtesy of: <http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/usgginventory.html>

<http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview.htm>

<http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/censusandstatistics/a/commutetimes.htm>