Assessing Carbon Policy Experiments

The idea of a low-carbon society has gained political momentum. Actors worldwide seek effective and efficient ways to reduce global CO₂ emissions and to switch to a more sustainable pathway of production and consumption. However, industrialized countries are firmly wedded to the carbon economy, and developing countries are only starting to explore the full potential of economic growth based on fossil fuels. Despite all attempts to negotiate internationally binding reduction targets and implement domestic climate mitigation policies in many countries worldwide, global CO₂ emissions increased both in 2010 and 2011,¹ and most economic systems are still far from taking the first steps toward a low-carbon economy.

It is extremely difficult to switch large-scale economies or societies from one systemic mode to another. Carbon policy experiments have been conducted for many years, but no magic bullet has yet emerged. Any energy efficiency gains are typically eroded by rebound effects. A fuel switch toward less carbonintensive fuels is feasible in certain economic contexts but generates no additional reductions in others. Many types of geo-engineering are not yet technically available and are rejected by the public. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is not yet mature, and its value is debatable for a number of reasons. The establishment of carbon markets is thus currently the dominant policy choice, even though it is generally accepted that carbon markets alone are not sufficient to attain the goal of a low-carbon economy.

Nevertheless, industrial emitters will have to face a carbon-constrained business world, whatever future policies might be chosen. What chances exist of creating and implementing effective carbon mitigation policies if major industries anticipate unacceptable costs and organize resistance? How effective can these approaches be if much relevant data and technical expertise belong to the emitters that are to be regulated? How are these policies formed, and how well can they perform after they have been subjected to a difficult policy process, with much compromising and changing of the original policy ideas? What can governments and other actors in the carbon mitigation arena learn from past experiments seeking to implement technologies or policy instruments?

The three books discussed in this review essay ask these questions in a systematic and insightful manner. They all provide a thorough assessment of how such policy experiments occur and what their potential for carbon mitigation may be in the inevitably pluralistic real world.

The edited volume Caching the Carbon: The Politics and Policy of Carbon Capture and Storage begins from a pragmatic viewpoint. The editors point out that although CCS is rife with problems and has nowhere achieved a full measure of commercial application, this technological mitigation option is potentially important as part of a global strategy to reduce CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels. It is intriguing to read this book with the latest twist in the German “Energiewende”² in mind, as a law on CCS passed the German legislative process in mid-2012.³ This law simultaneously allows the testing of CCS and makes CCS virtually impossible to implement on a large scale because of the approach taken to decisions on underground storage siting.

The volume is organized around seven country case studies (the United States, Australia, Canada, Norway, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands) and a special case study on the EU. The authors address the same guiding questions but were freed from an overly static common methodological and theoretical framework. Consequently, they present eight totally different accounts of the passage of CCS through the political process, and eight assessments of the current carbon mitigation potential of this approach in each national context.

One of the most fascinating insights provided by this differentiated perspective is that CCS is not a...