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Generally accepted by whom? We can't currently efficiently and scalably remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Charging based on marginal climate change or marginal
by harshreality 7y ago
Generally accepted by whom?
We can't currently efficiently and scalably remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Charging based on marginal climate change or marginal removal cost is dumb. It's like MegaCorp charging marginal cost for a widget. Sure, it covers operational costs, but the company has no way to pay back debts for capex and other sunk costs so they go bankrupt.
Unless you consider whole-system costs for complete carbon neutrality, including at a minimum all hydrocarbon-utilizing modern industries (energy, transport, manufacturing), you're mispricing CO2 emissions.
- zaroth 7y agoYou can bypass all of that messy calculating economically speaking. The easiest way to calculate the marginal cost of 1 tonne of CO2 is to create a market and find the smallest amount you can pay someone else to reduce their emissions by 1 tonne. These carbon credits exist, and they generally run for ~$40 per tonne. I presume they work, for example, by paying the premium for fully renewable energy versus non-renewal energy, thus converting some amount of electricity generation which would have been CO2 emitting into non-emitting for someone who is paying the non-renewable rate. They could also be indirectly reducing CO2 emissions by helping to pay for CO2 reducing R&D or other such projects. Or I suppose you could pay someone to extract the CO2 directly, but I would guess that's the least efficient way to spend your dollars presently.