Sustainability Prosperity, a not for profit organization providing research, policy proposals, and educational information on environmental pricing reform, has recently published a report on “Eight principles for pricing carbon“. According to the website, these eight principles are:
Comprehensive: across all sources and sizes of emissions with no exemptions
Nation-wide: a federal framework is needed to establish a minimum carbon price across the country.
Simple and readily implemented:avoiding complex rules and exemptions, and with a short lead time to come into effect.
Transparent and accountable: to ensure its integrity, any new policy must be accompanied by a clear analysis of its expected economic and environmental effects, including a clear accounting of amount and use of any revenues raised.
Complemented by other measuressuch as improving the efficiency of vehicles, homes and appliances, and promoting technology research and development where a price signal alone is insufficient.
Environmentally effectivein meeting the jurisdiction’s medium and long-term emissions reduction targets
Ultimately comparable to carbon prices in other countries
Predictable but adaptableto provide investment certainty but respond to changing scientific knowledge, international agreements, or unanticipated emissions reduction responses.
I haven’t read through the report in detail but what’s interesting is that they have applied the eight principles to current policies in Canada. The results? They concluded that BC’s current carbon tax system is the best policy in Canada; you can read the scorecard of policies in Canada here. Well we know there are a lot more work to do to get the carbon system right and operational (tax plus cap and trade), but it’s encouraging to see that BC is ahead in the game!
This is an article on Globe and Mail which includes interviews with Stephanie Cairns, director of carbon pricing for Sustainable Prosperity. Although the current report did not rate BC NDP party’s cap-and-trade system, she commented that:
“There’s very little detail in what they released… [but] our score card would rate this as the weakest policy in Canada.”
Ms. Cairns said the NDP plan, to axe the Liberal carbon tax and replace it with a cap-and-trade system, would apply to only about 32 per cent of emissions in the province.
She said a cap-and-trade system, without a tax, could be effective, but it would have to apply far more widely than the NDP has proposed.
“They need to address the other 68 per cent of emissions,” Ms. Cairns said.
And she said the NDP plan, to get rid of the tax and then develop the details of the cap-and-trade policy later, would be destabilizing to business.
I will report again after reading the eight principles in detail and share some thoughts. If you have read it, what are your thoughts??
I can’t believe that I’ve never seen this before, it was made for April fools day for 2008… it’s really entertaining and I think would be a good message, could be a good education tool!
I previously blogged about PepsiCo and their Green vending machines; this article is about another of their green initiatives - life cycle carbon footprint for PepsiCo owned Tropicana Pure Premium Oranage Juice. It was concluded that a 200mL glass of Tropicana has a carbon footprint of 180g of CO2-equivalent. That amount is similar to driving 720 metres in a compact car or using 11443.7 staples! Although it may not sound a lot (the driving analogy), think about how many people drink orange juice each morning!
What is a “life cycle” carbon footprint for a product? They are also called “cradle to grave” carbon footprint, which literally means the accounting of carbon for a product starting from raw material and (usually) end in the landfill. Using the Pure Premium organe juice as an example, the life cycle carbon footprint would include carbon associated with:
Growing the oranges
Harvesting and transporting oranges to be processed
Processing of the oranges to orange juice
Bottling orange juice
Tranporting “made’ orange juice to grocery stores
Transporting orange juice to households
Disposing of orange juice boxes
You get the idea. Personally I like the idea of product life cycle carbon footprint, as long as the boundary is set properly. In this case, we don’t really know what the boundary is because I don’t have the actual study. I think that PepsiCo has decided not to include the carbon footprint assocaited with producing the juice box, but the disposal of the juice box is included in the carbon footprint. The problem with that is that if there is a life cycle carbon footprint analysis done on the juice box, then the disposal of the juice box would be counted twice, which would not be correct. How to fix this problem? Well, in an ideal world where all products needs a carbon label, there’d be regulations (one’d hope). This is just a really small problem in this case which may happen in other cases, but the bottom line is that this is great and I hope more and more products having life cycle carbon footprint and creating carbon labels!
By the way - 60% of the life cycle carbon footprint is from juice production (not surprising), but 58% of the 60% (or 34.8% overall) of the life cycle carbon footprint is from growing the oranges (more surprising)! I’ll have to look for other examples but that’s quite significant if it is the benchmark for most processed food products!
So what is PepsiCo doing with the result of the life cycle analysis? They have started looking into alternative approach to growing the oranges, they’re even considering organic approach since it can reduce the fertilizer usage and thus the ccarbon footprint! Of course it’s not that easy - growing orange oranically will likely reduce yield and thus increasing carbo nassicated with irrigation, transportation, and so on…. What else is PepsiCo doing? They will be releasing carbon footprint for several other products in the near future!
Metro Vancouver’s 21 mayors have “come together” and agreedunanimously that the BC government should spend some of the carbon tax “revenue” on transit operations. In fact, our mayors think that the BC government should spend exactly $300 Million of the carbon tax. Well, wouldn’t it be nice to just get *free* money from the government?!
I have two main problems with this unanimous decision. First, there is no carbon tax “revenue” under the BC Carbon Tax system…. it is a methodology to shift tax from good tax (i.e. income tax) to bad tax (i.e. pollution tax). This systems works because there is incentive for individuals (persons and companies) to change and thus save money at the end of the day. If the carbon tax collected is to be used in infrastructure, then it’s not revenue neutral, is it?! Secondly, and more importantly, municipalities who have signed up to the BC Climate Action Charter can get the carbon tax that the municipalities have paid back! As of March 31, 2009, 174 municipalities have signed up to this charter and I’m pretty sure that all 12 cities in Metro Vancouver are onboard. How about pooling this amount of money for the transit system for Metro Vancouver? I should look up how much “tax return” each municipality gets!
When times are difficult like now, it’s a challenge to spend money, municipalities included! But why should we, as individuals who have changed our behaviours (willingly or not) and expecting a tax return be told that our mayors have unanimously decided that it’s fine to change the system? That’s what I disagree….
A refrigerator in the 1970’s and 1980’s uses 1400 kWh/yr. A refrigerator in the 1990’s uses about 700 kWh/yr; an energy star refrigerator today uses 425kWh/yr. My point is that refrigerators, as boring as they might be, use less than 1/3 of the energy it used to 30 years ago. You think that all new technologies are more efficient? Think again…. This is a table extracted from Noah Horowiz’s Improving the Energy Efficiency of Video Game Consoles article published in November 2008.
Console and Year Released
Off (W)
Idle (W)
Active (W)
Microsoft Xbox 360 (2007)
3.1
117.5
118.8
Microsoft Xbox 360 (Launch 2005)
2.2
162
172
Microsoft Xbox (2001)
1.7
59.9
64
Sony PlayStation 3 (2007)
1.1
152.9
150.1
Sony PlayStation 3 (Launch 2006)
1.1
181
188.6
Sony PlayStation 2 (2000)
1.7
24.2
24.2
Sony PlayStation (1994)
1.4
6.5
8
Nintendo Wii (2006)
1.9
10.5
16.4
Nintendo GameCube (2000)
0.7
22.7
23
Nintendo 64 (1996)
1.1
7.8
7.3
Nintendo Super Nintendo (1991)
1.5
5.4
7.3
WOW… other than Nintendo Wii which has a power rating lower than previous Nintendo consoles, the power rating for XBox and PlayStaions are just - crazy. For Xbox, the first generation of Xbox360 uses about 3 times as much power. The newer generation Xbox360 has been improved and uses slightly less power, but still, the newest version of Xbox360 uses almost twice as much power as Xbox. The figures are way more rediculous for PlayStations. PlayStation 3, when it first came out, actually uses 23.6 times more power! I understand that new game consoles are like a computer and thus usese more power than old ones, but I’d like to think that there are energy efficiency opportunities in these game consoles! Also worth noting is that for Xbox360 and PS3, they draw just as much power when it’s idling!! The reason is that it’s like a computer is running as long as you have it on!
BC Carbon Tax | flo | 
April 30, 2009 12:30 am | 
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