But that only shows that the ETS was lobbied hard enough to be made meaningless, not that the underlying principle is unsound. The cap-and-trade of sulfur was extremely successful in the US to reduce emissions at a minimal cost. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
not that the underlying principle is unsound.
The underlying principle is credit creation by intermediaries. Enough said.
The energy value of a unit of carbon - say a "Dollar's worth" or a "Euro's worth" at a point in time (the "launch date") - could easily be a "Carbon Dollar" or "Carbon Euro" "Value Unit" (cf Keynes' Bancor) used as a reference unit on a global "International Carbon Clearing Union".
Traders could straighforwardly value electricity, all forms of carbon-based fuels, and all forms of "fiat" currency" against such a unit.
Using such a unit - based upon ownership of units in "Pools" of future production - to waste energy will literally be to waste money.
Within such a framework, the necessary carbon tax could be simply applied at the clearing level whenever a transaction takes place involving non-renewable forms of carbon.
This creates a Renewables Fund or Pool, which will make interest-free "energy loans" to anyone wishing to build renewables, or to invest in energy savings.
The loans are then repaid in "energy units" which are either MegaWatts (from renewables) or Negawatts, from savings. In the latter case the Pool simply acts as a virtual energy provider and the customer repays in energy - out of his savings - the loaned units, at the market price through his utility billing system. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
