The Herald has an interesting puff-piece this morning about Celsias.com - a kiwi company which claims to be
the first company in the world to enable everyone to benefit financially from taking action to solve [global warming] and our patent pending service is your opportunity to get rewarded for playing your part – registration is free.
Its mostly hot air at the moment - all they have is a PR website rather than a live system - but what they seem to be proposing is effectively a private "cap and trade" system among their members. People and companies can sign up, measure their emissions, and track the savings they make as they invest in energy efficient technology and lifestyle changes. But rather than purchasing an offset for those emissions (as is standard in carbon neutrality schemes like Ebex21, who I used to go carbon neutral a few months ago), instead you simply track changes from your initial baseline, and sell any savings as carbon credits.
As an opt-in scheme, its obvious that only those who make savings will participate. But from the Herald piece, that seems to be the point: Celsias wants to "assist our members to create as many carbon credits as possible". So their real business is likely to be packaging and selling offsets from distributed savings to the corporate market - like Ebex, but without the trees. Its perfectly valid - many offset schemes work by selling the emissions reductions gained by building windfarms or installing energy efficient lightbulbs - and really just a question of how you prefer to get your credits. And from the individual perspective, the promise of money might at least get people to think about emissions reduction.
The real question is whether it will get them to think enough. Offsets sell for between NZ$10 - 25 per ton, and that's probably about the amount an average household could be expected to save. Sure, its nice, but I'm not sure how many people will go to the effort of tracking and auditing their emissions for that sort of payoff. Still, its worth a go.
I saw their PR this morning
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU0610/S00049.htm
Looking at that I wondered if they could possibly be talking about actual Kyoto credits rather than some kind of imaginary internet thing.
As I understand it Kyoto is an agreement between governments to do things based on their net carbon outputs. How that actually pans out in terms of commerce or what is up to the governments. So while I can reduce consumption or make myself carbon neutral (even if I could prove it to a satisfactory standard), I can't earn any actual credits. Unless my government is daft enough to hand them out for that kind of thing.
What would be the cost of a verifiable audit?
It's good if it helps people save energy, but I don't follow the trading scheme.
Ebex letting you become carbon neutral for your own piece of mind is one thing, but...
Or am I showing my ignorance?
Lyndon: you understand correctly - Kyoto is a deal between governments, and local implementation (which in Europe includes emissions trading between large companies) is up to them. However, there's also a growing voluntary market for carbon offsets alongside formal policies, driven mostly by concerned individuals and corporations who want to enhance their environmental image. It's pure hot air, as far as Kyoto is concerned - and yet at the same time it can also result in real reductions - though that depends on the robustness of the scheme. And Celsias' scheme doesn't seem to be the most robust, at least if its aiming to make its reductions primarily through individuals.
ReplyDeleteAnd OTTH, reading their full release, it seems to be more about providing a market and creaming a percentage off the top than selling offsets themselves. Which is great for people looking for credits, but may be work for people wanting to sell. We'll really have to wait and see...
I'll also confess I don't understand how this is supposed to work.
ReplyDeleteSuppose I am a NZ business, and I reduce my emissions by X.
Then NZ's total emissions go down by X, and the NZ govt can buy X less credits off other countries (or sell X more).
But the NZ govt still isn't going to give me a piece of paper saying "X carbon credits" are they?
So even if firms in the EU were in the business of buying carbon credits from outside the EU, I couldn't get any money from them since I don't actually have any credits on paper.
And even if I have X "Celsias credits", why would any NZ business buy them off me when there aren't any restrictions on carbon output in NZ?
And finally, how the hell can Celsias actually stop me lying about my emissions and claiming this massive cash payment? the cost of monitoring would be huge.
Is that all correct?? If so, it doesn't make sense to me.
The only things I can think of are that:
(a) Celsias is betting that soon enough the NZ govt will introduce a domestic cap-and-trade scheme.
(b) Celsias is putting their name out there early as a marketing aid, so that if a cap-and-trade scheme arrives businesses all sign up with them.
(c) Celsias is hoping that early publicity could get them some kind of government contract doing verification of carbon output or emissions reductions, once a NZ domestic cap-and-trade scheme is in place (assuming they have the capability).
Still don't understand the focus on individuals...even if the NZ govt imposed cap and trade soon, surely it would only be for businesses, not households? (And it couldn't be for both businesses and households because then people would be paying for their emissions twice...).
Just Don't Get It
Anon: you're missing option (d): enough companies want to improve their environmental image to purchase credits on a voluntary market. Globally, enough do to support a tidy little industry - and its the global market they're really aiming for.
ReplyDeleteThat said, if they're sourcing their credits from individual reductions, then monitoring and certification is a huge issue. As you point out, people could lie. If the credibility of the scheme depends fundamentally on the honour system, then its "credits" are worthless; even those participating in the voluntary market want more than that.
(And yes, their reference in their press release to Meridian Energy's deal is more than a little misleading, since what was on sale there was Kyoto Assigned Amount Units (or rather, a contract to deliver them) - which are decidedly not "hot air" under the Kyoto Protocol).