Personal carbon trading in the context of the EU emissions trading scheme

Although several personal carbon trading (PCT) scheme designs have been mapped, the practical challenges in the context of existing EU climate policies have not been addressed in detail. The implementation and administration of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) are compared with the current PCT proposals to reveal the intricacies of the implementation and administration of a new emissions trading scheme as well as issues of compatibility between schemes. Several issues need to be resolved. For example, problems of double regulation and double counting could be created by the parallel existence of the EU ETS. In addition, a clear definition of 'personal' is needed in order to prevent carbon leakage to 'non-personal' areas. Furthermore, monitoring (international) mobility emissions is a challenge without a practical and politically acceptable solution. Monitoring of emissions and trading of allowances in real time through the use of a carbon swipe card is likely to increase the costs and reduce the political acceptability of a PCT scheme. Finally, the assumption that equal per capita allocation would be fairer than other allocation methods is far from being accepted, therefore weakening some of the benefits of a PCT scheme.SCOPUS: ch.b