The UK government is considering a carbon allowance for UK citizens to help it meet its targets for carbon reduction. Known as Personal Carbon Trading, the idea is that everyone will have their own quota so that somebody who uses too much can buy credits from someone who uses less.

Unfortunately, it’s looking as the though the UK government will abandon this idea in favour of higher taxation on motorists. Which will no doubt boost the government’s coffers, but will do little to reduce the effects of climate change.

Carbon Rationing

It’s much more progressive than taxation, it tends it re-distribute wealth from the rich to the poor. It’s transparent, it’s easy for everyone to understand. You all get the same carbon ration, if you use more than your ration you have to buy some extra from someone who’s used less. And it also contains an in-built incentive for people to think about their energy use and to think about how they’re going to stay within their carbon ration. So for instance you say: ‘Oh I better go and change my light bulbs, otherwise it’s going to cost me a lot of money’. (Source: George Monbiot on Today, BBC Radio 4)

Key to the whole concept is keeping the carbon allowances low, and lowering them further in the future. Low carbon allowances would create a more buoyant carbon market and people would have more incentive to trade their carbon with one another. So far, the UK government has been very reluctant to set hard targets on what this allowance would look like for fear of offending big business.

It’s an interesting idea, and one that works naturally with PickupPal as we calculate the amount the amount of carbon saved by PickupPal rideshare users. You can see what the overall total is on the bottom-right of our home page.

- Jonathan