Cap and Share - Design

Design

This market based mechanism was devised by Feasta in 2005 and 2006, and they have set out the case for the introduction of Cap and Share globally in policy documents. It calls for global emissions to be capped at their current level and then brought down year by year at a rate fast enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. Each year, the emissions tonnage involved would be shared equally amongst the Earth's adult population, each of whom would receive a certificate representing their individual entitlement. The recipients would then sell their certificates through the banking system to oil, coal and gas producers who would need to acquire enough of them to cover the carbon dioxide emissions that would be emitted from all of the fossil fuel they sold. Everyone would receive at least partial compensation for the higher cost of fossil fuels that limiting their availability would necessarily involve.

Comhar, the National Sustainable Development Council of Ireland, commissioned a report on the mechanism which incorporates policy and economic analysis of using Cap and Share to control emissions in Ireland, particularly from the transport sector. The final report was published in December 2008.

Cap and Share is partly an extension and popularisation of the Contraction and Convergence proposal developed by the Global Commons Institute, which also calls for an equal per capita distribution of emissions. Cap and Share differs in that it insists that emissions allocations should be distributed equally to individuals as their right, whereas Contraction and Convergence (C&C) allows governments to decide if this is the way they wish to share out what is, essentially, their national allocation. C&C also allows for (but does not insist on) a convergence period, during which the richer countries would receive higher per capita emissions allowances than poorer countries. Cap and Share says people in rich countries should get the same emissions entitlement as those in poor countries from the start, but suggests that in the early years of the system, a portion of everyone's emissions entitlement should be held back and distributed to governments of countries which were facing exceptional difficulties in adapting to climate change or to low levels of fossil energy use. The governments involved would sell their certificates to raise money for remedial works. For example, the government of Bangladesh might sell its allocation to pay for better defences against rising sea levels.