Some years ago I read about Tradable Energy Quotas as a method of ensuring everyone has access by right to their fair share of what fossil fuels are left and high energy users could buy units from low energy users. Then, being aware that our country, and indeed the whole world, was not make the necessary cuts to emissions in time to have a liveable climate, I thought to revisit the idea.
I discovered that not only had the idea lasted, but that there was a UK organisation called the Fleming Policy Centre which promoted it. This was named after the visionary green economist Dr David Fleming whose ideas on de-growth for a post fossil fuel economy are well worth reading. He died in 2010 but his friend Shaun Chamberlin carried on his work, finishing his two books Surviving the Future and Lean Economy.
Rationing had always appealed to me. As a child I remember taking ration coupons to the shop to buy sugar, clothing, butter and tea along with our money. Naturally our parents managed the petrol coupons.
Petrol was rationed from 1940 to 1950. During the last three years of the war the restrictions were severe. New Zealand also rationed clothing, footwear and nylon stockings.
Then in the 1970s there were oil shocks. When carless days were introduced in 1979 they were unpopular and largely ineffective because a black market arose in exemption stickers given to car owners in essential industries. Petrol rationing was threatened but never imposed.
The fact is that black markets will always appear when there is no trading allowed in ration coupons. And if you ration per month with no trading allowed, then people will buy all the petrol they can and store it in all sorts of containers like “califonts, kegs, kettles, demijohns, vinegar and whisky bottles, tins of all descriptions” as one account says. The government then made this illegal, which really encouraged a black market.
TEQs are ration coupons but they will come in digital form these days like Airpoints or Flybuys. The difference is that you can’t use them alone when you cash them. You will have to surrender them along with your cash when you buy petrol or gas or any fossil fuel.
Fleming worked it out that only 40% of petrol users were private individuals and the rest were business, governments and other organisations. Each year there is a set number of TEQs allowed. 40% are given to individuals in a weekly allowance. The business and governments have to get theirs through buying them at a weekly tender and this sets the price in NZ dollars when people come to trade them. Through a market, heavy users will be able to buy TEQs from low users. Buying and selling is as easy as topping up a mobile phone or Snapper or HOP card for bus trips.
Fleming argues that this method puts the onus on the users to find the best ways of reducing their fossil fuel use. (More about this later). In WW2 people used horse and cart or just walked.
And of course TEQs units also be denominated in emissions rather than energy. In fact it makes more sense these days to do that now that we know how many categories there are for emissions. That’s worth doing instead probably. But you can understand that this was invented in 1996 before so much was known about our NZ emissions. We certainly didn’t know agriculture contributed nearly half our emissions in those days and we have quantified emissions from waste much better too.
A great deal more information on TEQs are at https://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/faqs. This will take a long time for you to get through. Skim it and come back and back. I recommend reading the 2011 All Party Parliamentary report.
If you are a New Zealander and interested in following through as an idea, please get in touch with me at deirdre.kent@gmail.com as we are trying to start a movement to promote TEQs.