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Collection: Putting a Price on Carbon

McDermott’s Fee and Dividend Bill

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I’m almost a week late on this (hey, I’ve been on vacation), but I want to shed a little positive light on Washington congressman Jim McDermott’s new carbon pricing legislation.

It’s more than a little refreshing to see that at least one member of the Northwest’s congressional delegation is still working hard to put a firm limit on US carbon emissions. It’s also nice to see that the so-called “fee and dividend” approach is still alive.

Under McDermott’s plan, which he calls a “managed carbon price,” the Treasury would set up a carbon fee to be levied on emissions. The proceeds would then be divvied up with 25 percent set aside for reducing the federal deficit and 75 percent returned directly to legal US residents as a per capita dividend. (More details are here and here.)

There’s a lot to like about this approach, not least of which is the fact that it provides Americans with a direct financial stake in reducing carbon.

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Washington Carbon Tax: New Model and Analysis

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Sightline is very pleased to be hosting a new analytical paper and model, “Washington State Carbon Tax: Fiscal and Environmental Impacts” by Keibun Mori, a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs. He created the Carbon Tax Analysis Model (C-TAM), for the Washington State Department of Commerce.

It’s an impressive piece of work on several levels. Mori’s analysis, which centers on a British Columbia-style carbon tax, is almost certainly the most comprehensive published treatment of a state-level carbon tax in Washington, and maybe anywhere. Even better, his spreadsheet-based C-TAM model manages to be open-source and comprehensible, but still allow for a remarkable degree of complexity and user input. Mori includes a terrifically thorough treatment of fuel prices and demand elasticity (which is a subject of much debate and confusion in climate geek circles). The result is a solid look at the economic effects and environmental benefits of a state carbon tax in Washington.

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Northwest Carbon Pricing Conference

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Update!—Location has been changed to a larger space. Please see below.

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Sightline Fellow Yoram Bauman is hosting the Northwest Carbon Pricing Conference.

I’ll be speaking at it, but that’s not the main reason you should go. It’s going to be a good event because of what it’s not going to be: a line-up of the usual suspects.

The speakers are a genuinely heterodox group of Northwest leaders who are taking seriously the challenge of addressing carbon in a systematic and economically rational way. Among others, you’ll hear from:

  • U.S. Representative Jim McDermott
  • Jeremy Hewitt, Climate Action Secretariat, BC
  • Kimberly Harris, CEO, Puget Sound Energy
  • Todd Myers, Washington Policy Center
  • Cliff Mass, UW Atmospheric Sciences Professor
  • Yoram Bauman, World’s First & Only Stand-Up Economist
  • Llewellyn Matthews, Northwest Pulp and Paper Association
  • John Burbank, Economic Opportunity Institute
  • Jim DiPeso, Republicans for Environmental Protection
  • Bill Messenger, Washington State Labor Council
  • Me!

DATE:   Saturday May 21, 2011
LOCATION: University of Washington, Health Sciences Room T439 *

More conference info below the jump.

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