Cap and Trade 101: Why "Free" Allowances Are OK

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There’s one thing I don’t get about how Cap and Trade works. How carbon emissions would still come down, whether the initial allowances were auctioned or free. Most environmentalists are up in arms over “polluting industry getting free allowances” while I don’t object to anything that sweetens the deal. But would it work?

So I contacted Harvard’s Robert N. Stavins to get a very simple concrete example. He has authored much referenced works on environmental policy design and Cap and Trade legislation draws heavily on his work. Here’s his analogy in which TV or video gaming stands in for carbon emissions. First, you set a Cap. The limit will be 4 hours total, with a Cap of one hour max for each child. Here’s how he put it.

“If I put in place a system whereby you have to have an allowance for every hour of video games tonight, it does not matter whether you bought it or got it for free, it still limits you to one hour.  Period.”

He added: “And if you are allowed to trade these allowances with others, you have the same incentives to sell your allowance if you don’t want to play any video games tonight; or to buy more if you want to play more than one hour, regardless of whether you had to buy or got for free the first one.”

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Tomorrow night, the total allowance Cap ratchets down to 3 hours total. The four participants can divvy up that total by buying and selling, but it will still be 3 hours total. Each night, with more trading, more of the time will have been traded for, not part of any initial free time.

So, if on night one, one child sold his allowance to the other three, equally. On night two, therefor, the 3 remaining kids are now using up a partly free; partly paid-for allocation. It makes no difference. The limit is the limit.

For those of us who are (or who have ever been) parents, this is a familiar situation. Who hasn’t battled all kinds of ridiculous maneuvers to avoid the dreaded bedtime, and end the fun. First we have to battle the first monsters under the bed. Video games time can’t be over!

Just as our kids do, unwilling to relinquish video game time, fossil industries also bring up all kinds of equally outlandish delaying tactics for why we can’t implement reasonable policy to reduce carbon pollution: the socialism, the communism, the fascism, the Al Gore monster! All must, must, must first be dealt with before we put any limits on fossil fuels.

But under a Cap and Trade program, the Cap is the limit. Whether the initial allowances were originally free or auctioned won’t change the limit. And soon enough, they’ll all be traded anyway. That’s why giving some for free initially will still reduce the total pollution.

Robert Stavins is the Harvard Director of Graduate Studies for Public Policy and the author of this further reading about policy design.

Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy

Addressing Global Climate Change in the Post-Kyoto World

Environmental Protection and the Social Responsibility of Firms

Economics of the Environment

The Political Economy of Environmental Regulation

Environmental Economics and Public Policy

Related stories:

Cap and Trade 101: How a “Cap” Ensures Carbon Reductions

76% of Cap and Trade Bill Allowances Benefit People Not Polluters

Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Will Pay For Itself, CBO Finds

Image: Flikr user 3Bing


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