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The oil shock, the credit crunch and the near-collapse of global climate negotiations demand a radical rethink of current policies. Michael Grubb and his co-authors present a path to tackling climate change that can also enhance international and energy security, and help global financial and political adjustment to the rise of the emerging economies. Bringing together insights from contemporary development, management and behavioural sciences, this book develops a new planetary economics. As carbon becomes an increasingly limited and valuable global resource, it can also serve as an anchor point for adjusting global financial imbalances. This book shows that low carbon economies can have a longrun competitive advantage because of their higher efficiency and reduced exposure to oil instability.
The key to making this transition lies in the integrated use of: innovation policy; carbon pricing; and, consumer empowerment. The triad of interlinked solutions presented in this book can create a tipping point towards energy and climate security. A coalition of countries that spearhead this agenda will benefit most from it - the powerful combination of benefits it offers will make it impossible, ultimately, for any country to stand aside.
1. The Age of Innocence The Copenhagen Crescendo * No End of History * Cognitive Dissonance: Willing but Not Able * Global Markets: US Takes Charge * Back from the Brink: NEU Emperor, Same Clothes * From Stalemate to Impasse * The Theory of the Problem and the Problem with the Theory 2. Carbon Caution The Oil Roller Coaster - What it Did and What it Means * Fossil Fuel Resources - From the Frying Pan to the Fire * Global Warming in a Page * Three Warmings (and a Cooling) * Impacts and Uncertainties * On Costs, Benefits and Risks * (Not) Willing to Pay, (Not) Willing to Accept? * Weitzman's Dismal Theorem * Inside Out 3. Future Conditional Emission Sources and Sinks * Recent Trends and the Crossing Point * Global Prospects for Energy and Emissions * Atmospheric Implications * Three Strikes and UNFCCC, Kyoto and Copenhagen Pledges * Bigger Changes Ahead * Mitigation Options * Mitigation Costs * Economics of Changing Course * Structuring Solutions PART II: THE THREE PILLARS OF SOLUTIONS Pillar I: Human Ingenuity - Technology is the Answer! So What's the Question? 4. Energy and Emissions - Technologies and Systems Drivers, Channels, Fuels * Energy Use and Options in Buildings * Energy in Industry * Energy in Transport * Liquid fate * Direct Fuels, Heating and Cooling * Electricity Futures * Electricity without Carbon * So What's the Question? 5. Bridging the Technology Valley of Death - From Ideas to Products The Innovation Chain * Who Invests, and Why? * The Technology Valley of Death * Pushing Further * Pulling Deeper * Synthesis: The Four Journeys 6. Transforming Systems - Investing in a Low Carbon Framework Introduction: No Modest Task * Unlocking the System: A One-way Path? * Transport Transitions * Electric Infrastructure * Sustainable Communities * Role of the Government in Perspective: Money, Markets and Consumers Pillar II: You Get what you Pay For - the Challenge of Pricing Carbon 7. Setting a Price Why Price Matters * First Steps First: Reforming Energy Subsidies * Pricing for Energy Security: Gasoline Taxes * Pricing for Pollution: the Carbon Dimension * Tax Versus Trade: Storm in an Economist's Teacup? * Pricing Pollution in Practice * The Politics of Pricing 8. Cap-and-Trade & Offsets - From Idea to Practice Scope and Coverage # * The EU Emissions Trading System a Lesson in Institutional Evolution * The Kyoto Mechanisms: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly * Emergent Systems * Lessons for International Adoption of Cap-and-trade 9. Who's Hit? - The Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing and How to Handle Them Societal Costs and Revenues * Industry Impacts - Who's Hit (or Moves)? * Tackling 'Carbon Leakage' - An Evolutionary Approach to Production, Consumption and Trade * What Carbon Does to Energy Prices * Consumer Impacts - Who's Hurt (and What to do About It)? * Energy Access and Carbon Pricing in Developing Countries * The False God of a Global Carbon Price Pillar III: Smart Choices - Efficiency, Consumers, and Voters # 10. The Energy Efficiency Gap - Why Do We use so Much Energy? The Potential for Energy Efficiency * Trends to Date * Barriers to Change * Consumers as Drivers of Emissions * The Bigger Picture 11. Efficiency Tried and Tested - Three Decades of Energy Efficiency Policy Institutional Framework * Information o Standards * Fiscal Subsidies and Cost Transfers * Supplier Obligations * Other Policy * A Measured (but poorly measured) Success * Seeking Synergy 12. Empowering the Consumer (and voter) - Understanding and Influencing Behavioural Change PART III: GOING GLOBAL 13. The Global Setting - The Changing International Landscape and its Implications Recap: the International Response to Date * A Changed World: Economic, Financial and Carbon Flows * More of the Same Can't Deliver * The International Dilemma: A Strategy in Sshes * Top-down Dreams * Bottom-up Bullshit * A Fresh Look at the Tragedy of the Commons 14. The Carbon Coalition - How Smart Cooperation can Solve the Global Problem The Challenge * Technology Cooperation as if We Mean It * Carbon Added Pricing * Low Carbon Culture * The Role of Multinational Companies * The Tipping Point 15. Thinking Big (but seriously) How Governments have Tried to Take it Seriously (but couldn't) * Classical Economics and Planetary Economics * Peak (sp)oil Revisited - the 21st Century struggle for Resources * Carbon and the Global Financial System * The Legal Underpinnings * Climate Change and Geopolitics * Our Choices
Professor Michael Grubb is Chair of the international research organization Climate Strategies, headquartered at Cambridge University where is also a Senior Research Associate at the Faculty of Economics. His former positions include Chief Economist at the Carbon Trust, Professor of Climate Change and Energy Policy at Imperial College London, and head of Energy and Environment at Chatham House, and he continues to be associated with these institutions. In 2008 he was appointed to the UK Climate Change Committee, established under the UK Climate Change Bill to advise the government on future carbon budgets and to report to Parliament on their implementation.
