Plan B Calls for Personal Carbon Rationing

Seventy years after wartime rationing was introduced, the United Kingdom may need to look to rationing again–this time of carbon emissions rather than food–warns a new report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

The new IPPR report "Plan B? The Prospects for Personal Carbon Trading" argues that a trading scheme is not the best option for reducing carbon emissions (such as those from heating and lighting our homes, from driving our cars and from taking flights on holiday) as it is relatively expensive and would be difficult to implement. But it concludes that if at the end of the UK’s first carbon budget period in 2012, carbon emissions have not reduced, the Government will need to face up to the prospect of introducing personal carbon trading as a ‘plan B’.

Proposals for personal carbon trading aim to cut emissions by giving every person in the country a quota of free ‘carbon credits’ which would be needed to buy electricity and gas for homes, fuel for cars and airplane tickets for holidays. Unlike food rations during the war, carbon credits would be tradable, so people with small carbon footprints could sell their spare credits while people with gas guzzlers and houses full of energy-hungry gadgets would need to buy extra credits to cover their extra emissions. Over time the quotas would shrink, in line with the need to hit emissions reduction targets.

Matthew Lockwood, Associate Director at IPPR said: "Personal carbon rationing and trading should not be a first option. But the Government should start preparing a ‘plan B’ in case current policies fail to deliver. We can lay the ground work now by giving people much better information about the carbon they are emitting, whether at home or at the petrol pump.”

IPPR’s study estimates that personal carbon trading would be an expensive option, costing in the region of £1.4 billion a year to administer the millions of carbon accounts that would be needed. It is also likely to be unpopular. However, while the Government has a raft of new policies in place aimed at bringing in a new low carbon economy, past efforts to cut carbon emissions have not been very successful. If current measures don’t work, then the Government will have to consider personal carbon trading more seriously.

IPPR argues that the Government could start preparing for this eventuality, for example building up people’s ‘carbon literacy’ by making information about carbon emissions available on gas and electricity bills, at the gas pump and on airplane tickets. 

Government should also run a ‘know your carbon limits’ campaign along the lines of alcohol awareness advertising, IPPR said.