Toward ZeroCarbon NYC

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Toward Zero-Carbon NYC

• Full-cost pricing of CO2 (carbon tax)
• Full-cost pricing of driving
• Cordon pricing
• Area-wide road pricing
• Curb space priced for 15 vacancy rate
• Embrace wind power
• Unbundled real-time electricity metering
• Community-based energy efficiency
• Conservation arbitrage with Upstate NY

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Carbon Tax Basics

• Taxing bads gt subsidizing goods
• Global metric (unlike cap-trade)
• Clear price signals (ditto)
• Distribute revenues pro rata (Alaska)
• Border Tax Adjustments
• Polluters Pay
• As dynamic as capitalism
• Necessary, not sufficient

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Carbon Tax Proportions
Fuels are taxed by carbon content
per btu
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Price has fallen in 30 (44) of past 68 months
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Demand for gasoline is price-elastic2008 v. 2007
(six months ea.)

• Usage 9,021 mbd v. 9,209, ? 2.0
• GDP ? 2.3, ? Gasoline ? 1.6
• Usage shortfall 1.6 2.0 3.6
• Price 3.48 v. 2.75, ? 22 real
• Elasticity (short-run) 3.6/22, 0.17
• Elasticity (long-run) we assume 0.40

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A Carbon Tax Path

• 37 / ton of carbon ( 10 / ton of CO2)
• 10 / gallon of gasoline, jet fuel, etc.
• 0.72 / kWh (U.S. retail average)
• Reduces U.S. CO2 emissions 4
• Repeat gt 10 years (while standards and
  incentives also cut emissions)

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Life with a Carbon Tax

• Energy
• Coal-fired generation down
• Wind and other renewable generation up
• Incandescents / halogens out, CFLs / LEDs in
• Nukes up?
• Transportation and Land-Use
• SUVs out, sedans in
• Costlier air and highway travel creates market
• pull for VGT-quality intercity rail
• Urban trips by bicycle up 10x, to 10
• Urban revitalization

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Who Supports a Carbon Tax?

• Former V-P Al Gore
• Mayor Michael Bloomberg
• NASA climatologist James Hansen
• Most academic economists and many public ones
  on left and right
• Friends of the Earth
• Growing cadre in U.S. Congress

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Full-cost pricing of driving

• For New Yorkers to
• accept something as
• transformational as
• paying to drive on free
• roads and streets, they
• need to receive a
• benefit that is equally or
• more transformational
• free transit (Kheel Plan)

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There is nothing more difficult to take in hand
than to take the lead in the introduction of a
new order of things ... the innovator has
for enemies all those who have done well under
the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in
those who may do well under the new. Niccolo
Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513
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NJ Offshore Wind Farm The View
(NYC needs 7,500 for 100 of kWh)
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To see these giant towers near your house it
would be like driving through oil derricks to get
to your front door. Retired ABC-TV exec with
65 hilltop acres in upstate Cherry Valley, NY
Times, Windmills on Their Minds, Aug. 28,
2002
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Toward Zero-Carbon NYC

• Full-cost pricing of CO2 (carbon tax)
• Full-cost pricing of driving
• Cordon pricing
• Area-wide road pricing
• Curb space priced for 15 vacancy rate
• Embrace wind power
• Unbundled real-time electricity metering
• Community-based energy efficiency
• Conservation arbitrage with Upstate NY

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• A NYC energy-
• efficiency
• failure
• Manhattan
• Community
• Board 3 lets the
• clock run out
• On Greening
• A Block

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• The bicycle offers the gains of
• advanced technology without
• threatening the environment. It
• stands not only for undamaged
• nature but also for unbroken
• autonomy. To attack the pedals
• may be strenuous over the short
• run, but it is an expression of
• trust in ones own powers, for
• with the bicycle everything
• depends on the self.
• Wolfgang Sachs

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Web sites

• www.carbontax.org
• www.komanoff.net
• http//www.komanoff.net/wind_power/
• http//www.komanoff.net/oil_9_11/
• http//www.komanoff.net/fossil/
• http//www.komanoff.net/nuclear_power/
• www.kheelplan.org
• www.streetsblog.org