Heavy users of fossil fuels could actually reduce their reliance on it when we ration fossil fuels using Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs). How would these rich people reduce their fossil energy?
Emissions of the rich
Imagine Kevin living in St Marys Bay who has a private helicopter, a large house, and four gas guzzling cars. Every year Kevin charters a private plane from Jet Charters to fly to Aitutaki in Rarotanga. And during the week he flies first class on AirNZ regularly from Auckland to Wellington for business meetings.
Kevin lives next to Ian Jones who lives more modestly. Kevin and Ian went to school together, and they watch the rugby together some weekends.
After a long period of government reports and campaigning we finally have TEQs. These are the ration quotas you need to surrender every time you buy fossil fuels. Kevin has to buy his TEQs for his cars and his helicopter, since they both use a lot of fuel. When he buys his twice-yearly charter flights to Aitutaki the company Jet Charter has to surrender a great many TEQs.
How does this affect Kevin? Because people in New Zealand haven’t been adapting very quickly to their lower energy life, the TEQs price is rather high. This has to be added to the already huge sum he pays for his charter plane. Kevin has heaps of money so doesn’t worry too much about the price of TEQs as he can always buy more. But this recent rise in the TEQs is starting to bother him.
TEQs for those with a high-energy lifestyle
The St Marys Bay people are all starting to get a bit restless as the reality sinks in. They notice that it is becoming more difficult to buy extra TEQs for their high-energy lifestyle. There are fewer of them for sale this year than last year and the price has risen because people in the suburb hadn’t really adjusted much to a lower energy way of living. They were all still off to Australia for a weekend’s shopping.
Next year is going to be worse for them and they are scratching their heads.