In high income countries, the majority of the cost of construction is land, labour and permitting costs. Steel and cement don't contribute much to the final cost of the building. Plus most building regulations are local. Local progressive jurisdictions can get together and have a mandate for using green steel and cement assuming green premium is less than (let's say) 80%. Final cost of the building will go up by less than 3-5% probably.
As I said in previous comment, some costs matter more than others.
The same thing can be done for single use plastics. Mandate carbon neutral plastic production and even if the price increases by 300%, it probably won't show up in the CPI.
Again I prefer a neutral carbon tax, but these are the cases where the targetted policies make the most sense.
This is all very interesting and good research, but in a competition of nations where you can’t enforce rules, aren’t we doomed to always use the cheapest?
Yes, exactly. The final post will have a section on the one policy change we need to fix this: an international agreement to pay for enhanced weathering. My hope is that if the US and China can reach agreement on this, most other nations will follow suit (not Russia though).
Then nations can tax domestic emissions (or not) as they wish.
Interesting. I'm not confident this can be achieved, because while let's say between the western states we might have good intentions with the risk of bad execution, even with China I think there's the risk of bad intentions (i.e. signing the agreement with no plan to actually implement it).
In any case, a bad plan is much better than no plan, so thanks a lot for writing this series!
Yeah I think this is the key piece. There will be some industries (airplanes, concrete) that simply won't have competitive alternatives for the forseeable future. That leaves ~10% of emissions.
An international agreement where countries pay for these industries and cover any gaps in the plan is crucial to actually reaching net zero.
My hope is that the cost gets small enough and the diplomatic benefits high enough that a few nations will just foot the bill.
Africans are not bottlenecked by high fertiliser prices but by bad governance mostly by weak property rights. Just look at the agricultural success of Ethiopia.
In high income countries, the majority of the cost of construction is land, labour and permitting costs. Steel and cement don't contribute much to the final cost of the building. Plus most building regulations are local. Local progressive jurisdictions can get together and have a mandate for using green steel and cement assuming green premium is less than (let's say) 80%. Final cost of the building will go up by less than 3-5% probably.
As I said in previous comment, some costs matter more than others.
The same thing can be done for single use plastics. Mandate carbon neutral plastic production and even if the price increases by 300%, it probably won't show up in the CPI.
Again I prefer a neutral carbon tax, but these are the cases where the targetted policies make the most sense.
This is all very interesting and good research, but in a competition of nations where you can’t enforce rules, aren’t we doomed to always use the cheapest?
Yes, exactly. The final post will have a section on the one policy change we need to fix this: an international agreement to pay for enhanced weathering. My hope is that if the US and China can reach agreement on this, most other nations will follow suit (not Russia though).
Then nations can tax domestic emissions (or not) as they wish.
Interesting. I'm not confident this can be achieved, because while let's say between the western states we might have good intentions with the risk of bad execution, even with China I think there's the risk of bad intentions (i.e. signing the agreement with no plan to actually implement it).
In any case, a bad plan is much better than no plan, so thanks a lot for writing this series!
Yeah I think this is the key piece. There will be some industries (airplanes, concrete) that simply won't have competitive alternatives for the forseeable future. That leaves ~10% of emissions.
An international agreement where countries pay for these industries and cover any gaps in the plan is crucial to actually reaching net zero.
My hope is that the cost gets small enough and the diplomatic benefits high enough that a few nations will just foot the bill.
Africans are not bottlenecked by high fertiliser prices but by bad governance mostly by weak property rights. Just look at the agricultural success of Ethiopia.