Stuff You Should Know - What's the deal with carbon trading?

Episode Date: March 10, 2010

In this episode, Josh and Chuck demystify carbon trading, discussing everything from cap-and-trade schemes to carbon credits. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. He's given a little salute. I did. That was good.

Tell me, sir, reporting for duty. I need a beard and a cigar. Yes. Yeah. Chuck, how you doing? What, like Castro? Yeah. Okay.

Thanks. You're doing way too well. Yes. I'm doing great. Josh, you? I'm great, Chuck. On with the show? What's your witty setup here?

I don't have a witty setup. It's more of a depressing setup. All right, let's hear it. Obama finally conceded that the energy bill that Congress is going to pass under his first year or so of the administration is not going to have a cap and trade segment to it. No. No, it was going to. The House passed something with it.

The Senate's like, no, we're not going to. We just don't want to. We're not going to. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, but we're the Senate, so nothing's ever going to escape. It's like the black hole of legislation. Nothing can escape it, you know? So cap and trade is dead, and that's really sad, as we'll see, because it can be beneficial,

at least in theory. And as a result, all of these voluntary initiatives, because it was going to be a mandatory cap and trade setup for the United States, a bunch of voluntary stuff specifically out west. There was a regional cap and trade scheme that was going on or about to go on. And the whole thing was proposed and underwritten by Arizona because it's the greatest champion. And now that the Senate is like, no, we're not passing this, Arizona's like, oh, by the way, we don't really want to do this. Really?

The voluntary one? So it's fallen apart. There's a bunch of them falling apart. It looks like the only one that's new that hasn't been set up yet that's still going forward is California's. Well, of course. Yeah. Wow.

That's disappointing. It is. And do you think we should let everybody in on what cap and trade scheme means? Yes, Josh. We're talking about carbon. And it's basically a way to regulate carbon emissions through a market-based, much like any market-based thing like the stock market, except it's limiting carbon emissions. So what you do is you set a cap, that's the cap part, which is the limit of emissions

you're allowed to emit as a factory, let's say. And then the trade part comes in because you can, if you don't use all of your emissions credits, let's say, you can bank them or you can trade them and sell them with your factory buddies. Right. Is that a good way to say it? That's exactly. It's perfect.

As a matter of fact. Thank you. Chuck Bryan, everybody. There's a regional cap and trade scheme up in the Northeast that's been fairly successful so far. The Chicago one? No. It's in both Eastern states, like in New England, among, I think, electrical utilities.

And it's voluntary. And basically, so you have a body that's governing this. And then they say, they set a cap, like you said, and let's just pull a number out of the air. They can, all of the people who are members of this, all of the electrical companies that are members of this, combined are allowed to emit 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide next year. And you're just making up that number, right?

Pulling it out of the air. And then you create these credits that are slices of that, tranches of it. So let's say each tranche is 100. That means there's one million credits out there available for everybody. And let's say they're distributed evenly maybe at first. But then factory A puts out, and there's 10 factories, so each one can put out 10 million metric tons of CO2 next year. Then factory A says, okay, we're accidentally putting out 11 million.

Factory B, we noticed that you're on track to put out 8 million. That means you have two extra credits. Can we buy one of those from you? Boom, done. Done. So these things now have a value, a money value. And there is a penalty for going over, which should be more than the credit is. Right.

Right? To stay under. Right. Yes. Very well said. Yes. So that is a cap-and-trade scheme. And they are in existence.

Right. And scheme just sounds negative because the Ponzi thing, and scheme just sounds, they should change the name. It has a negative connotation. It definitely does. And I can't help but think that there are people out there like, oh, I don't want a cap-and-trade scheme. Right.

Don't really know about it. So yeah. That's just the word for it though. Yeah. It's not bad. It's a scheme in Europe that's fairly vital, heavily criticized, but still also, it's the first mandatory one, I think, in the world. Right.

And it was born out of the Kyoto Treaty, right? Yes. The ETS, the European Trading Scheme, is like you said, born out of the Kyoto Protocol, which does not tell people, tell participating countries how to participate. They just have to meet the standards. Right. So Europe, the EU came up with the ETS, and it includes 12,000 factories and utilities in 25 different countries.

Right. And each member state, I thought this was odd, sets its own emissions cap based on the Kyoto Protocol, which we are not a member of. No, we're not. I'm like, what's the Kyoto Protocol? This is the first time I've heard of this thing. That's not true. You've heard.

Okay. Yeah, but well, although we helped draw it up, right? The Clinton administration did. Yes, and then it was scuttled before it came into effect in 2005 by the Bush administration. Right, because of fears that it would aid that it wasn't properly put together to begin with and be that the financial impact might harm America's economy. Well, plus also, it was divided countries by Annex I and Annex II, Annex I being industrialized nations, and Annex II being developing economies.

The problem is, is two of the world's biggest developing economies, India and China, are also two of the world's biggest polluters as far as CO2 emissions goes. And that was one of the problems that the United States had with the Kyoto Treaty is that it didn't put heavy enough sanctions on these developing countries. Because they're not required to meet the same standards, and that makes sense. It does make sense, and there's a certain amount of, hey, we already screwed up the world, but we learned from it. So now you can't build your economy by screwing up the world, because we've already learned

the lesson the hard way, even though we wouldn't be in this mess if we hadn't already screwed up the world, but you can't do the same thing we did. Right. So there's a certain amount of that, but at the same time, there's also a certain amount of, okay, we need to remain competitive in the global marketplace. And one of the things, well, the whole point of carbon tax is to make it harder to emit, or to make economic sanctions on emissions. So that means that there's an extra cost that American companies have to bear that companies

in operating in China or India don't have to. Right. That's not a carbon tax, though. That's different than carbon trading, right? No, carbon tax is just straight up, you put X number of emissions out, you pay X number of dollars on those emissions. So there is an incentive to reduce your emissions, because you're paying a lower tax, but both of them are de facto taxes on pollution.

Right. So we were talking about the ETS, the European trading system. This is, you're saying that it was controversial, and one of the reasons is controversial is because the government can allocate kind of at will, it seems like. So preferred industries maybe might get some free credits if they're inching up toward their limit, their cap limit, and basically they call it a permit to pollute. Right. And it exempts those industries, those favorite industries, or the ones that have the best

lobbyists. So that's no good. No. Like everything, it gets tainted. Right. And it's also, there is a market over there. You can buy carbon credits from the ETS, like just as a speculator. Okay.

But it's mandatory, which takes a certain amount of market fluctuations or market base out of the whole thing, the whole equation. Right. The mandatory participation? Yeah. Right. So if you have a voluntary participation trading scheme, cap and trade scheme, you would think that based on Adam Smith's theories, this thing would be flawless, right?

Where would you find such a thing? In the United States. Yes, you would. Yeah. Since we're not a member of the Kyoto Protocol, I almost call it the Pioto Protocol. I think that's what you should call it. That is, that's what we have here now. So we have, we didn't participate officially, but I think 130 mayors across the country

implemented their own programs in their city that met the similar standards as the Kyoto. Which is as heartwarming as Moose playing in a sprinkler. Yes. Evidently. Yeah. So that's good though, because we're getting with the program anyway, and now you wrote about the Chicago Climate Exchange. Is that right?

Yeah. So tell me about that one. So there's a guy named Dr. Richard Sandor, and I believe he's an economist. He's out of Chicago. I know that much. And in 2005, he founded something called the Chicago Climate Exchange. Yeah. The CCX.

Right. And it functions exactly like a stock market does. Exactly the same. It functions more like a commodities market does. So like pork belly futures or oil or gold or something. But what they trade on the Chicago Climate Exchange are carbon credits. Yes. But it's still legally, it's voluntary, but it's still legally binding.

Right. When you sign up as a company on CCX, what you're saying is I agree to reduce my carbon emissions by X amount. And if I don't, there's actually a huge penalty for it. Really? It's five grand per metric ton. Oh, wow. Yeah.

That adds up too. Yeah, it does real quick. And it is legally binding. So the CCX can levy these really stiff penalties for people who don't meet their quotas. Now on the CCX, what they trade are carbon credits. Right. So on any given day, they're like maybe three, four bucks. I don't know what they're up to these days.

I know the ones in Europe, since it's mandatory, they're usually about 10 times higher, 10 times higher in value than the ones in Chicago. But let's say four bucks for 100 metric tons of CO2 emissions. So just like what we were talking about before, a company who is going to emit more can buy these credits so that they don't have to pay these stiff fines. But they have to buy credits, say, from somebody who, another company, who is coming in under. So the other company has provided a financial incentive for lowering their emissions in the form of these credits.

And then the company who's going over is being penalized in the form of these credits. You can also earn more credits, not necessarily just by buying some from somebody else, but by funding projects that actually reduce carbon. Right? Yes. As long as they're verified. Yes. And you can actually do that in the ETS as well.

You can earn credits through two Kyoto mechanisms, the clean development mechanism. That allows you to help out poorer Annex two countries that can't afford their own, reduce their own carbon output. And then joint implementation is when you can partner with other Annex one countries, which I guess that's a good thing too. Well, yeah, either way, as long as you're reducing CO2, that's one of the one of the very distinct aspects of reducing greenhouse gases and CO2 is that no matter where you do it, you're affecting everything.

Yeah. So planting trees in like, say Sudan or something, well, ultimately have an effect for the rest of the planet, right? Yeah. A lot of companies offer that now. Mm hmm. They offer that sort of like, I know certain airlines and airline websites will offer like an extra, if you want to pay an extra $10 on your ticket, they'll plant 10 trees for

you in some other country. Right. So that's kind of nice in a way. It is nice. Are you ready to talk about that? Yeah. First, let me correct myself. The CCX was founded in 2003, not 2005.

Yeah. And you know what? Let me go ahead and throw out a stat since we're still on CCX. They traded about four years ago, a total of 10.2 million tons of CO2. And then, and Chuck also, the value went from like next to nothing a couple of years ago to I think as much as $100 million, right? Carbon offsets. The carbon market itself, I think generated about $30 billion in 2007, and what we're

talking about is something that doesn't exist. It's a reduction. You represent a reduction in CO2. It's sort of hard to wrap your head around it. It definitely is. And it actually, it can work. Yes. Right?

There's a model that's very similar. Do you remember, Chuck, when we were younger? Acid rain. Oh, yeah. Whatever happened to acid rain? I know. The fears of schoolchildren everywhere to go outside and our skin would like melt in the rain.

Yeah. It was the communists, AIDS and acid rain. Yeah. The big three. Yeah. It was childhood, didn't we? Yeah, we did. Yeah.

But acid rain, you never hear about it anymore. And the reason why is because the U.S. government actually instituted a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme on methane emissions. Isn't that what it was that caused acid rain? Sulfur dioxide. That's right. So close. Yeah.

So the acid rain program, Josh, yes, limits sulfur dioxide that powers plants here in the States and it has worked to the tune of emissions have dropped 50% below what they were in 1980. Yeah. Not bad. No. Not at all. And they did it slightly differently.

They put a cap on. They divided it amongst emitters of sulfur dioxide, which I think are, again, electrical plants or power plants are the worst emitters for it. And they said, here are your allowances. Don't go over. If you do, you're in big trouble. And each year, they'd revise the cap lower or maybe every couple of years. And that's the whole point.

I don't think we talked about it. The point of a cap-and-trade scheme is that you don't just put the cap somewhere and leave it there. Yeah, it should go down. It should eventually go down with a moderate pace because you don't want to go too far down or else the economy is going to be crippled. You don't want it to be too high up or else there's not going to be any point to it. But you do want to raise it systematically, which is actually lowering it systematically

over time. Yes. So, Chuck, have you noticed that the carbon credits we're talking about sound an awful lot like something else called carbon offsets? Yes. I said that you and I can go on to the Chicago Climate Exchange and buy carbon, 100 metric tons of carbon if we want, which is like four bucks, I think, a pop. You can also find a broker and say, I want to buy a carbon offset.

And what do you get for that, Chuck? Well, these are pretty popular now. What you get when you buy a carbon offset, let's say Al Gore made the headlines a few years ago. Mr. Green, Al Gore, who I love and you do as well, he was under fire because of the amount of energy his large house in Tennessee consumed, which was a lot. Yes. Right after Inconvenient Truth came out.

Exactly. I think Drudge Report broke like his elected bill or something like that. Right. So, they kind of held his feet to the fire and he said, no, I purchased, wait, that was my Clinton. Good enough. He purchased his car. Wait, can you do it, Gore?

Because if so, I do want to hear it. I purchased carbon offsets. That was actually really good, Chuck. So carbon offsets, let's say you could go through a company like Terrapass, who we'll talk about in a little more detail, and he would basically invest in renewable energy in other parts of the world. So let's say if he's using 100 credits over what he should be using, he'll buy 100 credits worth of renewable wind energy in Africa to make up for what he's using.

If you alleviate CO2 emissions anywhere in the world, it has just as good of an effect at home. Sure. Making him carbon neutral, I believe, is the word they like to use, right? Right. So if he calculates that his electricity that he uses annually at his house equals 50 metric tons of CO2 emissions. He will purchase that.

He can go buy that, right? So what you do is you go to a broker who sells carbon offsets and takes a cut. And they sell them right. They sell them for, let's say, nine bucks, a metric ton, right? Okay. I think that's about right, actually. So you say, okay, well, that's great because I only need 200 of these for the year. Yeah.

You got to have some coin in your pocket, a little extra spending money. But for 1,800 bucks, you can offset all of the CO2 emissions that your family puts out for a year. It sounds great. It does sound great. And you know what? It can be. We're not poo-pooing it, but there is another side to the coin, Josh.

There definitely is. Anything that sounds too good to be true or lets you sit back with your hand on the front of your pants, drinking a beer, and still somehow alleviating global warming, you should be suspicious of. Yes. And a lot of people are because a lot of times what's happening is, and this is the way I read this article, was that it's not necessarily creating new initiatives. A lot of these initiatives where the money is going, either we're already in place or

we're going to be in place anyway. So these firms are making a little extra cash, which they seem to appreciate. But the firms who are undertaking these CO2 emission reduction programs, right? They have said, and there's some quotes in the article. They said, you know, I made 16 grand last year and we're glad to get it, but we would have been doing this anyway. Right. That was a farmer who actually created or invested in very high-tech machinery that

used methane emissions from his cows manure to generate electricity for his farm. So he could save money. Well, he's actually paid money through investment in this. The problem is, this guy was going to do it anyway. It is good that he's being rewarded for it, but why aren't we seeking out projects that won't get off the ground unless there's investment? Exactly. That means this farmer was going to do it anyway.

And there's another project that wasn't going to happen unless it got this investment. Right. And it doesn't seem like there's a lot of active seeking out of investments. These brokers struck me as somewhat lazy and find stuff that's already there. Yes. And the other little hinky thing is that there's not a lot of transparency going on here. When you, when, I think, was this business week? Yeah.

Business week, got in touch with some of these firms and no one will say, the broker won't say how much of a cut they're getting. They won't necessarily say who they're getting in touch with to help alleviate the carbon reduction, to help manage the carbon reduction. So there's not very much transparency and that has set off a lot of alarm bells with a lot of nonprofits. Yeah, and it should. There's also the farmer, Darrell Vader is his name.

Is it really Vader? DeVader? Vander. Oh. It's too good to be true. Yeah. Just like a carbon offset. Right.

Darrell Vander, who has his poop powered electricity farm, he said that the, right. Thank you for that. Because I was about to start stammering. Oh, sorry. The investment that he's getting is $2 out of the $9, right, less than $2 per ton, yeah. That's what he's getting from this firm. So you have Terrapass, right, which is a broker, and then he was set up with Terrapass through a middleman.

So from the $9 that a person's putting in to Terrapass for that one ton of carbon dioxide, only $2 of it is going to the actual program. Right. And we're not poo-pooing Terrapass here. I mean, they're a San Francisco company that, I believe, a teacher at Wharton started. Yeah. And he likes to work, so he's legitimate. He proposed to his students to come up with an idea, and they did, and it's working.

They've got, I think, close to 50,000 customers. So I think they're trying to do the right thing, but it would be awesome if there were some new initiatives and not necessarily, hey, we'll give this farmer some dough for this thing he was already doing to begin with. Right. But I mean, you can make the point that they are rewarding this guy for going above and beyond where it gets out and yada, yada, yada, right? Yeah, very true.

There's a, did you know that Veil Ski Resort? Yeah, let's talk about that. Which, what's the company called? It is called Veil Resorts. Appropriately enough. They are 100% wind power. Right. Did you know that not one bit of their electricity comes from wind?

Yeah. So they're able to claim that they're 100% powered by wind, when in fact they have spent a lot less money buying renewable energy certificates representing the amount of wind generated that they would require to generate all their power. Right. So what the, and their PR flack is pretty correct in saying we're in the resort business, we're not in the power generation business, but the resorts actually did look into powering themselves, their entire resort with wind power, but they're like, whoa, that's a lot

of money when we can buy these offsets, right? Right. But there's a guy who actually does wind power electrical generation. It's called FPL Energy. And he's quoted as saying that voluntary renewable energy certificates, like the ones that the Veil Resorts Company bought, are pure corporate marketing and image management. And that's it. And this guy is actually the one who's on like the receiving end.

And he's like, this isn't, this is, this is not right. It's not. It doesn't work. Right. So when the boots on the ground are telling you that everything's all screwed up, that usually means something's really screwed up. Right. And again, when you're sitting back, just writing money out of your checkbook instead

of actually doing something in your own backyard, it's probably not having the same effect even though on paper it looks like it. Right. Can I fill you another quote? This is from Anha, or Anja, Anha, Colmus. She's an outreach coordinator at Tufts Climate Initiative, and it's an advocacy group for the environment. And she kind of sums it up, nature does not fall for accounting schemes.

So that kind of says it all. It allows Hollywood hot shots to feel good about their life by purchasing, offsetting their massive energy consuming lifestyles. And it allows companies like Veil Resorts to say, you know, we're powered all by wind when they're really not actually powered by wind. Right. So, you know, I'm at odds because I'm a green guy, and it's good that people are doing things like this and not anything at all, but at the same time, new initiatives.

Well, plus, there's also a big debate about exactly who the onus should be on for reducing emissions in emitters, right? So Delta Airlines had a little program, I don't know if they still do, where for $5.50 for domestic flights or $11 for international flights, you could contribute extra. You pay extra in your ticket and Delta would plan a tree. The question is, is Delta is the one that's actually polluting? Yes, you are. You're contributing, but you're also paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars for your

ticket. Why isn't Delta putting out any of their money to reduce their emissions or to find ways to reduce emissions or to fund projects that actually reduce emissions? Like it keeps the whole carbon offset thing that these companies are actually using for their own public image are actually being paid for by the company's customers, right? It's a little bit of a shell game, although I did discover one place, at least one place, that you can buy a carbon offset and it actually has an effect. Where's that?

I talked to a guy once. Down in the corner? Michael Short. I got him right here in my jacket. What do you want? A guy named Michael Short with a clean air campaign. They actually, you can go on to their website, calculate what your car puts out or how much you use in electricity as far as CO2 emissions, and they'll give you X number of tons you

want to buy an offset. What they do actually is they take your money to go buy carbon credits from the Chicago Climate Exchange and they sit on them. They retire them. They take them off the market, which drives the price up on the ones that are in the market because law of supply and demand, scarce or something, is the more expensive it is. They're actually in the game buying these carbon credits and taking them away from the actual emitters so that they do, it will eventually become more cost effective for these people

to take carbon reduction measures. You know what? It's all paper. It's all in the ether. It is. That's vapor. Yeah, it's vapor. It's what's so hard to understand about it.

But not really. Once you wrap your head around it. I'm not even an environmental guy. Just law of economics. Oh, yeah, you are. Are you kidding me? No, not really. Folks, Josh headed up the recycling program here at work before he officially had one

and took the cans himself every week and allowed the can-to-thing collector to be at his desk. You didn't take any credit for that, so. It's a little late for that. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. You left out the part where I took the cans to a homeless guy so he could take them in for money. Oh, man.

That would have been the ultimate cherry on top. That was. You really did that? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Look at you. I think I need to alleviate that the shame of being so vain by buying some carbon offsets

from the Clean Air campaign. They should have karma offsets just for being a bad person. You know, you could just buy karma offsets. I could use some of those. We should start selling them. Yeah, we should. Yeah. We heavily invest ourselves.

Look for those in the future from Chuck and Josh. Well then, if you want to learn more about carbon trading, type those two words into the handy search bar, HowStuffWorks.com, and it's now time for listener mail, so everybody grab your carpet square and lay down. Josh, how about a Kiva update first? Oh, that's an even better idea. You want to just break it down real quick for those who don't know? Sure.

What it is? Kiva.org is a microlending site where you can contribute to investors or entrepreneurs, I should say, in developing countries and in the U.S., and we have our own team, which you can find at www.kiva.org, slash team, slash stuff you should know, right? And we have a hell of a team, Chuck. We do, dude. We had a goal of $100,000 loan, and we are currently over $88,000 loaned through only 1,800 members on our team, which is awesome, but I do know that that is a fraction of our

audience. Oh, yeah. So I put the call out to you folks who have said, oh, man, I keep meaning to do Kiva. Just go to Kiva and sign up. It's really fast, and it's fun to loan, and in $25 increments, $25 increments. My loans are recycling now, actually, so they're going to be due up to re-loan soon, which is pretty cool. That's awesome.

Way to go, Chuck. Way to go, Josh. That's a Kiva update, right? Yeah. All right. It's time now for Listen and Mail. Yes, Josh. I'm going to call this, my family were witch burners.

This is from Gwen in Southern California. I'm so glad you guys did the podcast on witchcraft. I've been interested in witchcraft since I was a kid. In fact, it started while researching my family history. I discovered a long line of involvement with the craft. Our family is directly descended from increase in cotton maether. Woo! By the way, if I ever have a son, I'm going to name him Increase.

Increase Bryant? Yeah, that's a great name. Or Goody. Goody Bryant. That's a girl's name. Oh. Goody is short for good wife. Oh, okay.

So if I had twins, I could name them Increase and Goody, if they were. They were both Puritan ministers living in Boston in the 17th century. Cotton, who was the son of Increase, wrote a great deal on the subject of witchcraft, spectral activity, and spectral activity, even directly accused a number of individuals to be witches. He was said to believe, to be nearing, he believed we were nearing the last judgment and felt that he himself led the way against the devil's legions. Don't we all feel that way?

Yeah, he was clearly wrong. He was personal friends with a few of the judges that presided over the Salem witch trials and urged them to use confession as the greatest evidence. And I'm sure the confession was probably rung out. Beaten out of them. Beaten out of them. He and his father attended one of the final executions at Salem, but Cotton never recanted his position on witchcraft or his involvement with the trials, although his father became

more and more vocal with his doubts of spectral activity, most likely because his own wife was threatened and called a witch. This is her family, dude. Cotton, is that sinking in? Yeah, it is. Cotton is pretty famous and somewhat of a legend in the history of witchcraft. When I was younger, I got to visit Salem and they did reenactments of the trials. Some was cheesy.

Some of it really cool. I later got to visit the grave of Cotton Mathers at Cobb Hill where we spoke with and learned a ton from the gravekeeper. Strangely enough, on the other side of my mom's family, the Alexander side, we had a female ancestor burned at the stake. So she's really coming from both directions here. Unfortunately, we couldn't find out more about this because the documents are locked up in Ireland.

Probably some day I can pick up this investigation, they got more history. This all led me to study Wicca a lot when I was younger and you guys did a great job laying it out. So that is Gwen. Well, we already said the last name, Mathers, and she said, evidently- Well, she's got the last name still? Well, she said they picked up an S in the last hundred years. Weird, no?

Yeah. Because it used to be Mather or Mather. That means that the kid who played Beaver and leave it to Beaver is related then. Yeah. Jerry Mathers. Yeah. A witch hunter. Excellent.

So first-hand account from Gwen in Southern California. Thank you, Gwen. We love it. Appreciate that. Revelation about your family tree. If you have a story about how the Irish are keeping a stranglehold over information you wish to seek, put it in an email and send it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

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