Isra-Mart srl : Energy efficiency study and Tim Murphy on carbon credits

www.isra-mart.com

Isra-Mart srl news:

Ask 500 average consumers to pick the least energy efficient way to move goods, and they’ll correctly choose airplanes over ships, trucks or trains. Ask them to choose the best of the rest and the whole thing falls apart.

That’s the bitter pill in a new study titled “Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings.”

It takes 11 times as much energy to move a ton of freight one mile on a truck than on a ship, and 12 times more than by train. Yet hundreds of survey respondents solicited through Craigslist said it was about the same for all three.

There are two morals to this story, according to Cliff Davidson, CMU professor of civil and environmental engineering & engineering and public policy, and one of the study’s co-authors. One is that people don’t understand what methods are most effective at saving energy. The other is that without incentive or penalty, they’re not likely to reach for the more difficult and costly solutions, such as buying energy efficient appliances or tuning up the car twice a year.

The study’s authors have gotten some flack for suggesting that setting a price and a limit on carbon emissions would incentivize people to buy more energy efficient technologies. Davidson’s response: Remember when the price of gasoline trampolined to $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008 and people actually curbed their driving?

“We have to be very careful when we publish a paper like this,” Davidson said. “It’s going to be very hard on people if we add a carbon tax. But one has to think about, gee, what are the long-term objectives here?”

The last time we heard talk of a carbon tax was at last week’s Energy Inc. conference, where Congressman Tim Murphy blasted the idea and coined it the “Seinfeld Credit,” after the episode of the show where Jerry and George try to pitch a sitcom about nothing to TV network executives.

Murphy’s take on cap and trade is this: Companies that can afford to buy carbon credits from other entities that don’t need them will do so. They will not reduce their carbon emissions.

“In reality, these credits represent nothing — which is why I call them Seinfeld credits. Nothing has changed, except that if the company decides that it costs too much to buy those credits to make something, they will move those jobs oversees. As Shakespeare warned us, nothing will come of nothing. Wall Street will make millions trading these credits. (But) try to put a carbon credit in the bank, in your wallet, under the mattress.”