If any climate legislation could garner at least nominal bipartisan support, it might be Rep. John Delaney’s Tax Pollution, Not Profits Act. Delaney is in his second term representing Maryland’s 6th CD, which runs from the DC suburbs to the western end of the state. His proposal, introduced on Earth Day at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, would tax carbon dioxide and CO2 equivalents from methane and other sources at a rate of $30 per metric ton, increasing annually at 4% above inflation. The measure includes border tax adjustments to protect energy-intensive domestic industry from unfair competition from nations that haven’t enacted carbon taxes.

Rep. John Delaney (D-MD)

Delaney’s measure offers a sweetener to conservatives: a promise to apply roughly half of carbon tax revenues to reduce the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 28%. The bill would also provide monthly payments to low- and middle-income households and fund job training, early retirement and health care benefits for coal workers. At least as critically, at the AEI unveiling, Delaney committed near-apostasy by suggesting that his carbon tax could substitute for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, final regulations for which EPA issued last month.

The Carbon Tax Center assessed the Delaney proposal’s effectiveness using our 7-sector model. We project that in its third full year the measure’s $30 price would reduce U.S. CO2 emissions to 8% below emissions in the year before enactment. Unfortunately, its schedule of 4% annual real rises is too tepid to continue reducing emissions more than fractionally over the longer term. The low upward price trajectory is a shortcoming shared by the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, introduced by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) in June.

In contrast, carbon tax proposals introduced in this Congress by Rep. John Larson (D-CT) and Rep. James McDermott (D-WA) would rise briskly to exceed $100 per metric ton within a decade, which we estimate would reduce U.S. emissions below this year’s levels by more than one-fourth in that time (and by nearly a third below 2005 emissions).

In an online discussion forum hosted by OurEnergyPolicy.org, Rep. Delaney asked for comments on his proposal. Below, we group and summarize those comments. (more…)

Even in ecologically-minded Washington and Oregon, states where voters want government action on climate change, a divide among environmentalists threatens to undermine progress on the issue. A Carbon Washington ballot initiative to create a statewide carbon tax is gaining momentum, as we wrote last month. Yet several environmental groups are attacking the proposal as politically infeasible and socially regressive.

Instead, state and regional groups like Climate Solutions and the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy are pushing “clean” fuels standards. Their proposal, patterned on regulations in California and British Columbia, would mandate a mere 10% drop in the carbon intensity of transportation fuels over 10 years ― a small fraction of the deep reductions needed.

The carbon tax sought by Carbon Washington would cut CO2 4-5 times as much as the proposed WA Clean Fuels Standard (Source: CTAM).

Their course is difficult to fathom. Carbon taxes would cut emissions more and cost less than clean fuels regulations. And dividing environmentalists in order to pursue a lesser policy makes no sense strategically. Here are three reasons why a clean fuels standard doesn’t stack up:

1. Clean fuels standards won’t be effective

A model used by the Washington State Department of Commerce allows us to compare projected emissions reductions from the clean fuels standard with the carbon tax proposed by Carbon Washington in a measure known as I-732. (The tax would start at $10/ton of CO2, rise to $25 in year two, then increase 3.5% annually plus inflation.)

The 10% clean fuels standard would lower overall Washington CO2 emissions only 4% by 2040, not even a quarter as much as the 18% reduction projected from the I-732 carbon tax.

The reason is simple: a clean fuels standard only attacks emissions from the supply side of one sector, albeit an important one, transportation. In contrast, a carbon tax works across the entire economy, influencing every carbon-related decision about both supply and demand in every sector ― manufacturing, heating, electricity, etc. This means that, while a clean fuels standard only affects the carbon content of liquid fuels, a carbon tax also incentivizes less fuel usage, period. This transforms economies, cutting pollution and congestion through a vast array of actions encompassing urban density, freight logistics, walking, cycling, transit, and more mindful decision making.

In short, the difference in emissions between a carbon tax and a clean fuels standard is the difference between a society that takes current levels of automobile dependence as a given, and one that seeks to support a myriad of ways to transition to something different.

2. Clean fuels standards are more expensive

The Oregon Environmental Council writes:

The Clean Fuels Program costs the state virtually nothing. The burden of responsibility for reducing pollution is placed on the oil industry.

This conspicuously ignores how the oil industry passes down its costs of compliance to consumers in the form of higher prices. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has said gas prices will rise between 4 and 19 cents per gallon. An industry lobby group, the Western States Petroleum Association, is garnering support to repeal clean fuels by highlighting this not-so-hidden price increase.

Consumers aren’t stupid, they generally realize more regulations mean higher prices. A carbon tax raises fossil fuel prices too, of course ― that’s the point; but the revenue it generates can be disbursed to consumers as income or sales tax cuts, or via a straight-up “dividend” check, as Oregon Climate has proposed. (more…)

Notwithstanding the hype in the New York Times — “the strongest action ever taken in the United States to combat climate change,” “an aggressive plan to sharply limit greenhouse gases” — the final version of the US EPA “Clean Power Plan” being released today at the White House by President Obama actually constitutes a marked slowdown in reductions in electricity-sector emissions.

According to published reports, the administration plan calls for a 32% reduction in U.S. power-sector CO2 emissions in 2030, relative to actual 2005 power-sector emissions. That’s slightly more ambitious than the 30% reduction envisioned in the initial Clean Power Plan released in June 2014. Since 2005 power-sector emissions were 2,413 million metric tons (MMT), the targeted 32% reduction would be 772 MMT, or 7% of total projected U.S. emissions (from all sectors) of 5,684 MMT (projected by CTC in the absence of a U.S. carbon pollution price).

Emissions will fall 40% more slowly, under the Clean Power Plan rules released today.

Nearly half of that reduction has already been achieved, however. Actual 2014 U.S. power-sector emissions were 2,038 MMT, or 375 MMT less than the 2005 baseline level of 2,413 MMT. Expressed on an annual average basis, power-sector emissions of CO2 fell during 2005-2014 by 42 million metric tons a year.

To fulfill the total 772 MMT 2005-2030 reduction target, the “remaining” 2014-2030 reduction in power-sector emissions need only be 397 MMT. The implied annual rate of reduction over the next 16 years is just 25 million metric tons a year. That’s 40% less than the actual annual 2005-2014 reduction rate in power-sector emissions of 42 MMT per year.

It is probably true that we’re not likely to see a repeat of two factors that contributed to the 2005-2014 reduction in power-sector emissions — the long and deep recession that began in 2007-2008, and the advent of cheap fracked methane that grabbed market share from higher-polluting coal-fired generation. But two other emissions-reducing phenomena remain in full swing: ongoing cost reductions in carbon-free wind and solar photovoltaic power, and the harnessing of both digital tech and new business models to boost energy efficiency in buildings, appliances and businesses.

In this light, it seems premature, if not downright bizarre, to bestow “legacy status” on a plan that targets just one sector (albeit a key one), and that settles for cutting emissions in that sector at a lesser pace than the rate at which they’ve already been falling for a decade.

Seattle on the summer solstice. Crowds line Fremont Avenue in anticipation of the annual parade of naked bicyclists. Carbon Washington co-director Kyle Murphy is giving a pep talk to a group of volunteers that includes idealistic college students, veteran environmentalists, and former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn.

“You’re simply offering them the opportunity to participate in the democratic process. You don’t need to persuade anyone, just give them a chance to say yes.”

Seattle, June 2015: Petitioning for Carbon Washington.

I’m helping Carbon Washington (CW) collect signatures for Measure I-732, which would put a carbon tax on the state ballot in 2016. In general, people want to participate. Almost no one turns me down. I pass out multiple signature sheets as parade-goers fumble for pens. I’m talking to eight people at once, even while competing with the naked bikers for attention. A record-breaking drought is setting the stage for a long wildfire season, and climate change is already on everyone’s mind. In a single afternoon we collect more than 1,500 signatures.

The appeal of CW’s proposal is rooted in its overarching simplicity. Polluters pay, everyone else benefits. The measure would put a price on carbon emissions, forcing fossil fuel companies to internalize some of the social and environmental externalities of their business. The tax starts at $15 per ton of CO2, rises to $25 in year two, and then increases at 3.5% plus inflation annually. This long and steady increase will drive down CO2 emissions in the state.

Emissions would fall more if Washington’s power wasn’t nearly all hydro. (Source: CTAM model)

The tax is revenue neutral to appeal to conservatives. It uses the expected $1.7 billion in annual revenue to overhaul Washington State’s notoriously regressive tax code. Most of the money goes to lower the state sales tax from 6.5% to 5.5%. The 3.5% annual increase in the carbon tax is designed to carefully offset the rising value of the sales tax reduction, so that the measure stays revenue-neutral for 40 years. Another $200 million a year is used to fund the Working Families Rebate – an extension of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. These two pieces make I-732 the state’s most progressive tax legislation since groceries were exempted from sales taxes in 1977.

The third element of CW’s plan takes $200M to eliminate the state’s Business & Occupation tax on manufacturers. The intent is to make the state’s businesses more competitive and cushion any job losses due to the tax. The average manufacturer will pay in carbon taxes close to what it will gain from the elimination of the B&O tax. Unlike the B&O tax, however, carbon taxes do not increase as the business grows – as long as it can grow without increasing its carbon emissions.

Still, Carbon Washington faces high hurdles. A ballot initiative requires 246,372 signatures – 8% of the votes cast for governor in the most recent election. Since up to one-quarter of signatures fail the verification process, CW is aiming for 315,000. Successful initiatives, like a Michael Bloomberg-financed gun-control measure that passed in 2014, have needed to raise around a million dollars to reach that threshold. Carbon Washington is hoping to rely on an extensive volunteer network to do it for less than half the price. Still, more funding and volunteers are needed.

Measure I-732 steers revenues to households and manufacturers.

Assuming CW succeeds, it’ll have to defend its proposal on the ballot against the inevitable onslaught of Koch-funded interest groups. Some other environmental groups are skeptical that Washingtonians will vote for a proposal that openly uses the dreaded ‘T’ word. Climate Solutions, a regional organization, threw its weight behind Governor Jay Inslee’s cap-and-trade proposal. Despite attempts to appeal to Republicans, including a carve-out for the state’s only coal plant, that proposal failed to gain traction in the legislature. Climate Solutions isn’t backing CW’s proposal, afraid to lose what will surely be a big fight.

Yet if the conversations I had were any indication, Washingtonians are receptive. They have an example to their north, in British Columbia, of a successful and popular carbon tax, so oil industry scare tactics may prove less effective with voters. In polls, support varies between 30% and 60%, depending on how the issue is framed. Victory will be determined by whether enough voters can be educated about the proposal. By talking to voters and collecting signatures one at a time, Carbon Washington is getting a head start.

We’ve just posted an update to our spreadsheet model — our powerful but easy-to-use tool for predicting future emissions and revenues from possible U.S. carbon taxes. We say taxes, plural, because the model accepts any carbon tax trajectory you feed it and spits out estimated nationwide emission reductions and revenue generation, year by year. Here’s a rundown of what’s new in the update.

1. A year of new data: The most obvious change is the addition of 2014 baseline data on energy use, CO2 emissions and emission intensity for each of the model’s seven sectors.

Our spreadsheet model lets you compare different carbon tax trajectories.

2. Smoothing the carbon tax impact: A new feature lets users smooth the impact of the tax to reflect real-world lags in households’ and businesses’ adaptation to more-expensive fossil fuels. (You get to set the adaptation “ceiling” rate; any excess gets carried over to future years.) This feature is helpful for trajectories like the Whitehouse-Schatz bill, whose rate starts with a bang at $45 per ton of carbon dioxide but then rises only slowly. Under our default setting, the reductions from the $45/ton initial charge are spread over four years rather than, unrealistically, assigned to the first year.

3. Future baseline is calibrated to official forecast: We tweaked a few model parameters to make our 2040 emissions forecast without a carbon tax match the analogous forecast in the Energy Information Administration’s “Annual Energy Outlook.” This allows for apples-to-apples comparisons with other models that are explicitly calibrated to the EIA/AEO forecast.

(more…)

New York Times climate reporter Coral Davenport writes today that Pope Francis’s warning against cap-and-trade as a tool to address the climate crisis creates a “paradox”:

[W]here Francis’ environmental and economic agendas meet, he leaves something of a paradox. . . While urging swift action to curb the burning of fossil fuels that have powered economies since the Industrial Revolution, he also condemns the trading of carbon-emission credits, saying it merely creates new forms of financial speculation and does not bring about “radical change.” But carbon trading is the policy most widely adopted by governments to combat climate change, and it has been endorsed by leading economists as a way to cut carbon pollution while sustaining economic growth.

With due respect to Davenport as well as Robert Stavins, the Harvard climate economist whose concerns figure prominently in her story, there is no paradox. Francis’s encyclical, On Care For Our Common Home, doesn’t muddy the climate change debate because a carbon tax, not cap-and-trade, is economists’ preferred policy tool for curbing carbon pollution. Francis criticizes emissions trading on three grounds: First, trading carbon allowances allows traders to profit from the climate crisis — indeed, it’s designed to do that. Second, “offsets” that are virtually hard-wired into cap-and-trade shift the burden of pollution to developing countries. Third, cap-and-trade with offsets absolves the wealthy of responsibility to rein in their carbon-intensive lifestyles. In Francis’s own words:

The strategy of buying and selling carbon credits can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors. [171]

What, then, does Francis demand? That societies internalize the costs of pollution, especially climate pollution:

[O]nly when the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations, can those actions be considered ethical. [195]

A reference in that passage attributes Francis’s calls for polluters to pay “the economic and social costs” they incur to his predecessor, Pope Benedict. (Both pontiffs presumably intended “impose” rather than “incur,” i.e., for costs to be borne by those who impose them, but no matter.) Those resources surely include clean air. The new encyclical thus aligns the Catholic Church with the century-old “Pigovian” tradition of economists urging policies to internalize costs. Nevertheless, in an email quoted by Davenport, Stavins brands Francis as “out of step with … informed policy analysts around the world,” in effect labeling the Pope as economically-illiterate and naïve:

“I respect what the pope says about the need for action, but this is out of step with the thinking and the work of informed policy analysts around the world, who recognize that we can do more, faster, and better with the use of market-based policy instruments — carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade systems,” Robert N. Stavins, the director of the environmental economics program at Harvard, said in an email.

That Stavins is the lone environmental economist quoted in Davenport’s piece did not deter her from claiming that “environmental economists criticized the encyclical’s condemnation of carbon trading, seeing it as part of a radical critique of market economies.” Hardly. The Pope, like legions of environmental activists and economists worldwide, has seen the shams of emissions trading and carbon “speculation” for what they are. (more…)

Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia University’s prestigious Earth Institute, recently weighed in on the carbon-tax debate in the Huffington Post. The results are breathtaking – and not in a good way.

Cohen’s June 8 screed, “A Carbon Tax Is Not Feasible or Practical,” was a riposte to a New York Times editorial two days earlier endorsing a carbon tax as “one of the best policies available” to address global warming. The Times is wrong, says Cohen, as he proceeds to lay out a multi-count indictment. Among his anti-CT arguments are the following:

1. Carbon taxes are politically infeasible: Given the system’s deep hostility to tax hikes, “the space between the carbon tax as a policy idea and the reality of American politics is too vast to overcome. For better or worse, here in America we are in a period of tax policy paralysis that is unlikely to be surmounted anytime soon.”

2. Carbon taxes are unfair: They “cause people on the lower end of the economic ladder to pay a higher portion of their income on energy,” while corrective measures aimed at redistributing the costs “are far from simple to implement, might stigmatize recipients, and would become easy and obvious political targets.”

3. Contrary to The Times, carbon taxes are unequal to the problem of climate change because they would founder on the shoals of international politics: “China and India would need to go along, and given the urgency of their energy and development needs, it is difficult to imagine that they would agree to such a measure.”

4. Carbon taxes are anti-urban: “I sometimes think the push for a carbon tax comes out of an early 20th century environmentalist mindset that scolds people for consumption and living in evil, immoral cities.”

5. Finally, carbon taxes are unnecessary since tax breaks can be just as easily used to encourage alternative energy development: “Why waste time and effort on an infeasible policy that will never happen? Why not devote time and effort to building a real partnership between the public and private sector to create a sustainable economy?”

Careful readers will notice that the first two items are variations on a theme, which is to say the futility of relying on the U.S. political system to pass a well-crafted carbon-tax plan that discourages fossil fuels without burdening workers and the poor. The same can be said for number three, which is about the inability of a beggar-thy-neighbor international system to institute significant reform. Whether the fault lies with Washington, Beijing, or New Delhi, Cohen argues, the point remains that politicians of all nationalities are too selfish and shortsighted to deal intelligently with a carbon tax, so it’s best to forget the whole thing.

Charges four and five are different, so let’s tackle those first. (more…)

Editor’s note: Yesterday the world’s most influential newspaper finally did what CTC and other carbon tax proponents have sought for years: publish a ringing endorsement of a U.S. carbon tax. With its editorial, The Case for a Carbon Tax, the New York Times joins the growing community of opinion leaders, policy experts and, yes, elected officials who not only recognize the power of carbon taxes to quickly and equitably reduce emissions but also sense the emergence of a political critical mass that can enact fees into law. This heartening development signals that it’s not too soon to focus on the design of a U.S. carbon tax, especially its magnitude and rate of increase, as CTC senior policy analyst James Handley does in this post.

Which is the more effective way to set a tax on carbon pollution?

A. Start aggressively, then raise the rate slowly (“sprint”).

B. Start modestly, then raise the rate briskly and predictably (“marathon”).

You probably guessed that if the goal is to instill incentives that will bring about big emission reductions fast enough to avoid runaway global warming, the answer is B, the marathon. Yet a leading U.S. Senate advocate of legislative action on climate seems to be starting off like a sprinter, perhaps because his legislation is pegged to estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon that don’t account for the possibility that climate change will turn out to be catastrophically costly.

More on that senator in a moment — after this tutorial:

The Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) is a construct to quantify in monetary terms the damage caused by each additional ton of CO2 added to the atmosphere. While the SCC may sound arcane or academic, estimating its magnitude has real world implications: governments are pegging climate-related regulatory decisions to SCC estimates. A low SCC can make all but the lowest-cost clean-energy policies pencil out as expensive; higher estimates justify more rapid and aggressive measures, since moving too slowly to reduce emissions shows up as a mistake whose costs accumulate at a frightening pace.

Ice Shelf Melting in Eastern Norway (Paul Hoogeveen, Flickr)

Calculating the damage from a ton of CO2 turns on a host of assumptions that span wide ranges. Not surprisingly, estimates of the SCC reported in the peer-reviewed economics literature range from as little as $10 per ton of CO2 to over $400. A profoundly important modeling choice is how heavily to weigh the risks of climate-induced catastrophes. High-risk climate scenarios with nearly infinite costs, such as rapid release of methane from arctic permafrost or sudden sliding of vast ice masses into the ocean, “misbehave” in the equations used for conventional cost-benefit analysis, leading some modelers to omit them altogether.

One widely-used model assumes that economic growth rates will not be affected by climate change, thereby predicting that half of the world’s economic activity would continue after a whopping 18 degrees C of global warming. Other models dilute the high-risk scenarios by assigning them arbitrarily low probabilities that suppress their impact when their costs are averaged in with low-risk scenarios. A further problem in estimating the SCC is the bias toward high “discount rates” that telescope future impacts down to seemingly manageable proportions.

Amidst fraught debate and widely-divergent estimates, the Interagency Working Group has settled on $42 per ton of CO2 as the “official” U.S. government social cost of carbon. While that’s an improvement over past practice that omitted climate costs entirely — tacitly, an SCC equal to zero — the $42 figure grossly understates the large-scale global risks that dominate concern over global warming and climate change. (more…)

Rachael Sotos is a political theorist and adjunct professor with a background in philosophy, classics and environmental studies.

Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet, is both a tidy summation of the state of the art in climate economics and a powerful call for action. For all the uncertainties and challenges, “the overall policy framework needed for addressing climate change is clear and has been for decades,” state co-authors Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman (p. 23). “Carbon dioxide is the problem. Pricing it properly is the solution.”(38)

Wagner, a senior economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, and Weitzman, a celebrated economist at Harvard, are an intriguing blend of young and elder, and realist and idealist. They exhort economists and climate advocates to get past the “epic debates” between taxes and cap-and-trade and, while consensus builds toward carbon pricing, to engage in the work required for “second -, third-, and fourth-best solutions”(26): electricity grid reform, stronger CAFE standards, and strategic application of subsidies and U.S. EPA regulations. “At the very least,” they say, “these regulations could provide a real bargaining chip when it comes to U.S. Congress considering comprehensive climate policy and a direct price on carbon down the line.”(19).

Flying their Pigovian colors from Preface to Epilogue, the authors are emphatic and unambiguous; “Putting a proper price on carbon isn’t a question of if, it’s a question of when.”(xi) Our best hope is “a high enough price on carbon to reflect its true cost to society.”(152)

Unfortunately, the bracing clarity of Climate Shock appears to have been lost on some reviewers. Earlier this month, NY Times columnist Joe Nocera misconstrued Wagner and Weitzman’s extensive discussion of geo-engineering as surrender to the political obstacles to carbon pricing. On Nocera’s reading, insofar as “a carbon tax on the worst emitters has gotten nowhere,” it’s time for Plan B: “chemo for the planet.” Au contraire, Wagner and Weitzman do not delve into geo-engineering scenarios like sulfates dispersal in lieu of ambitious policies to reduce emissions. Rather, they insist, “the specter of geo-engineering should be a clarion call for action. Decisive, and soon.”(29)

If Nocera reconfigured Wagner and Weitzman to suit his own techno-utopian ends, Yale Nobel economist Robert J. Shiller, also in the Times, willfully invested Climate Shock with libertarian designs. Directly contravening the thoughtful and informative discussion of social change presented in Climate Shock (and previously thematized in Wagner’s 2011 But Will the Planet Notice?), Shiller proposed idealistically-motivated incrementalism as a way around Kyoto’s failure “to impose strict taxes on carbon emissions.”

According to Shiller, Wagner and Weitzman “say that we should be asking people to save our climate by taking many small, individual actions.” Climate Shock actually says the opposite: “the numbers don’t add up. They’ll only begin to add up when environmentalists use their collective political powers to move the policy needle in the right direction, toward a price on carbon.”(40) (See also CTC director Charles Komanoff’s recent takedown of Shiller’s piece in regard to both facts and theory.)

Shiller’s misreading is doubly unfortunate because, as Wagner and Weitzman point out, the imperative to seriously engage policy must be directed toward average citizens, “those in the middle of the political spectrum,” as well as those already conversant with climate economics.(136) Certainly we should all do what we can to encourage virtuous cycles of ethical engagement and political participation – “Recycling well leads to better environmental policies, which allow for a more environmentally enlightened citizenry; a more enlightened citizenry, in turn, leads to more people recycling well.”(132)

“Climate Shock” authors Martin Weitzman (left) and Gernot Wagner.

Indeed. But, as Wagner and Weitzman are right to remind: in a greenwashed world seemingly structured to distract and misinform the average person, the most virtuous deeds can dead end. In the practical economics of everyday life, single actions sometimes crowd out other forms of engagement: “when people substitute single, individual actions – like recycling – for larger policy actions – like voting.”(133) Pigovians from start to finish, Wagner and Weitzman are emphatic: “if you have to make a choice between recycling and voting for a price on carbon, choose voting.”(137)

Yet another review, this one by Yale economist William D. Nordhaus in the current New York Review of Books, is notable on several grounds, not least of which is Nordhaus’s outsized reputation as a pioneering climate economist and modeler. Respectful in tone, Nordhaus engages of Climate Shock’s discussions of geo-engineering, the economics of uncertainty and the pitfalls of negotiating climate treaties. Strangely, however, Nordhaus takes up Weitzman’s path-breaking analyses of catastrophic risk without acknowledging any critiques of his own perennially optimistic approach.
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It is true that the stroke of the presidential pen with which Barack Obama last week granted Shell Oil Corp. permission to drill off Alaska’s Arctic Coast cannot also put into force a U.S. carbon tax, without authorization by Congress. And it is all too possible that when climate reality eventually sweeps over the Capitol, the resulting carbon tax may be modest in scale and take a lot longer than a decade to reach the $100/ton level that would drive massive reductions in fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions.

All the same, it’s instructive to compare the capacity of Arctic drilling to supply oil with that of a robust carbon tax to quench the need for it. The outcome — the carbon tax wins — may not surprise. But the lopsidedness is startling: in just its tenth year, the carbon tax proposed last November by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), starting at $12.50 per metric ton of carbon dioxide and rising annually by $12.50 as well, would be eliminating the need for oil at around a dozen times the rate at which Shell would be pulling the stuff from the Arctic.

Oil savings from a robust carbon tax dwarf oil “gains” from Arctic drilling.

Here are the numbers:

♦ Royal Dutch Shell’s Chukchi Sea project is projected by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to extract 4.3 billion barrels of crude over a 44-year period. (See Chukchi Sea Oil & Gas Lease Sale 193 Draft Second Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, Volume 1 [pdf]; go to pp. 6 or 62 or 182 of 694.) This equates to daily production of 268,000 barrels. An estimated 2.2 trillion cubic feet of methane (natural gas) would be extracted as well; on a btu basis that equates to 360 million barrels of oil, or 23,000 barrels a day. Combined extraction of hydrocarbons is then around 290,000 barrels a day. (Note that we have not netted the energy expended to “discover,” extract and transport the oil.)

♦ For the carbon tax, we modeled McDermott’s Managed Carbon Price Act of 2014, setting the annual increases as the midpoint between the bill’s floor and ceiling prices. The price per U.S. (not metric) ton of CO2 in the tenth year, 2024, is $113.40. (Our model, which we’ll update soon, had the tax starting in 2015.) As indicated in the graph, the reductions in petroleum requirements would be substantial in every consuming sector. They sum to 3,486,000 barrels a day — 12 times the 290,000 bpd equivalent anticipated from Shell’s Arctic venture.

The estimated oil savings from the McDermott carbon tax amount to nearly one-fifth of U.S. oil consumption in both 2013 (the last data year in our model) and 2024 projected without a national carbon price. The biggest reduction in absolute terms is in what we call personal ground travel (chiefly driving), which dominates petroleum use. But on a proportional basis the savings would be greater in commercial sectors such as freight movement, oil refining, and construction, as the unmistakable price signal from the annually rising tax drives innovation enabling lower usage.

Still, the projected reduction in gasoline consumption for personal ground travel in 2024, 1.4 to 1.5 million barrels per day, commands attention. (more…)