Personal carbon offsetting 2020

This year is (almost) the same as last year: Australian Gold Standard Verified Emissions Reductions from the Carbon Neutral Charitable Fund (CNCF).

The difference to last year is that demand for GS VERs was so great the CNCF removed them from their web shop – however, they are still selling (at reduced volumes) over the phone. Individuals offsetting their personal emissions shouldn’t encounter any problems.

CNCF’s phone number is 1300 857 970 or +61 8 9420 7214.

I purchased offsets for 20 tCO₂-e at $25 each. Now that I have an electric car and live in an all-electric household with 100% GreenPower, offsetting 20 tCO₂-e is excessive! But I haven’t done the work to calculate my new emissions profile, so I’ll keep putting $10/week aside for the moment. If I decide to purchase fewer offsets next year I can always put the rest toward rego for the EV.

COVID-19 lockdowns don't show the limits of individual climate action

I’ve seen the following argument go around a bit this week:

“So we accidently ran an experiment where we did the most any individual can do to reduce carbon emissions and it’s not enough.” (Tweet)

It’s wrong. Individual actions are not enough, but they are absolutely necessary.

Institutional/structural changes are absolutely necessary – but also not enough.

We need everything.

Treating a three-month lockdown as a proxy for what can be achieved through individual action both reduces individual agency to consumption choices and misunderstands the nature of structural changes.

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Personal carbon offsetting 2019

I have discovered that individual purchases of carbon offsets from registered charities (i.e. not for a business nor from a business) are tax deductible. As such, while the South Pole Group (from whom I last purchased) is still around, I have switched to buying Gold Standard Voluntary Emission Reductions from the Carbon Neutral Charitable Fund. They sell offsets from Australia’s first (and, as far as I can tell, only) GS VER project.

Otherwise, my post from 2017 is still pretty current.

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Personal carbon offsetting 2017

TL;DR

I’m buying Gold Standard offsets from South Pole Group now. If you want to offset your own emissions, try estimating them using the EPA’s Australian Greenhouse Calculator. Then use the South Pole Group website to buy credits – ideally Gold Standard, but Verified Carbon Standard are probably also fine.

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The CCA's implicit social cost of carbon

Australia’s Climate Change Authority (CCA), in its 2014 Targets and Progress Review, recommended that Australia pursue a minimum reduction in GHG emissions of 19% by 2020 (vs. 2000). In modelling that target, the CCA estimated that it would involve carbon prices of up to $30/tCO₂-e in 2020, in real terms. (See p. 135)

The CCA used the damage costs of carbon (i.e. the social costs) in making its recommendations. While not explicitly stated, the CCA’s preparedness to recommend an abatement target that imposes costs of $30/tCO₂-e in 2020, in real terms, implies the CCA regards the social costs of carbon as ≥$30/tCO₂-e.

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Additionality in the VEET

When I reviewed energy efficiency trading schemes a few years ago,* the VEET was the only scheme we considered to address additionality. The section of the VEET Act 2007 we referred to was Division 2 (Prescribed Activities), §15 (2):

An activity may be prescribed to be a prescribed activity if the activity will result in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that would not otherwise have occurred if the activity was not undertaken.

However! I think we (I) referred to the wrong section – I think Division 2 (Prescribed Activities), §19 (2) is the appropriate one:

Without limiting the generality of subsection (1), the discount factors are to take into account any uncertainty associated with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that would eventuate from a specified prescribed activity or specified class of prescribed activities but for the existence of the VEET scheme.

* Betz, R., Jones, M.C., MacGill, I.M., and Passey, R. (2013). Trading in energy efficiency in Australia: What are the lessons learnt so far? [PDF]

Trading Costs and the Efficiency of Emissions Trading – Evidence from the EU ETS

I’ve lost a track a little of how the research projects I worked on at the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets progressed since I left, but it looks as though at least one of them is proving useful: my former boss, Regina Betz, presented some of our work at the 4th IAEE Asia Conference in Beijing this September just gone.

Trading Costs and the Efficiency of Emissions Trading – Evidence from the EU ETS [pdf]

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Climate Change and Health: Speech to the MDSC

I was honoured to today sit on a panel at the University of Melbourne MD Student Conference with Professor David Griggs, Associate Professor Marion Carey, and Senator Richard di Natale. Our panel topic was Climate Change and Health: The Greatest Moral, Economic and Social Challenge of Our Time.

Professor Griggs spoke on the sciene of climate change, I spoke on the economics of climate change, A/Prof. Carey spoke on the health effects of climate change, and Senator di Natale – who was busy and missed most of our speeches – spoke across all three topics.

The text of my speech is below.

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Cost of living decreases if carbon price repealed?

I was asked this week to pull together some information on what effects the Federal Coalition’s repeal of the carbon price could have on households, specifically as regards their income and expenses (excluding environmental costs/benefits), with the background of whether any cost of living decreases could be used to justify cutting back on other welfare programs. This is only a very quick analysis (and I’ve doubtlessly missed some more rigorous analysis that others have done), but my short answer is that cutting welfare programs due to an abolition of the carbon price is a bad idea.

The most recent and comprehensive source of information on this is the Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Bill 2013 Explanatory Memorandum. I’ve only skimmed it, but the gist is:

• The carbon price will be removed
• Household compensation will be kept at current levels, but no longer increased
• The ACCC will have new powers to investigate failure to pass through carbon price reductions for regulated supply (i.e. gas and electricity)

Taking these in turn:

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Carbon Pricing: It Works, Bitches (redux)

Updated on Friday, November 22, 2013 at 10:55 by MCJ

I dragged the sign out for yesterday’s climate change rallies, and while I wasn’t parading it as prominently as in 2011, pictures of me ended up online again. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

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