Author: Richard Tol

Reform of household energy policy

Minister Rabbitte for Energy sketches several reforms of household energy policy in today’s Irish Times. These are plans for the longer term.

There are a range of fuel allowances. Some are means-tested, some are not. None are needs-tested. Houses may be insulated at the exchequer’s expense, but the occupiers are still entitled to fuel allowances. Minister Rabbitte suggests that, in the future, fuel allowances will be directed towards colder homes. That is a welcome improvement.

There are grants for home energy efficiency improvement and micro-renewables. These grants are optimized for administrative convenience rather than emission or fuel poverty reduction. These grants also imperfectly address the core issue: The lack of access to capital to invest in home improvement. Minister Rabbitte suggests that, in the future, grants will be replaced with cheap loans. That is a welcome improvement.

Lack of information is another issue with household energy use. Minister Rabbitte suggest that, in the future, Building Energy Ratings will be mandatory. They are already, but this is not enforced and many prospective buyers/renters seem to be unaware of their legal right to a BER. Reinforcement of this regulation is a welcome improvement.

I had a close look at BERs in England. An English BER is about half the price of an Irish BER, and it contains much more information on heating costs and potential improvements.

Minister Rabbitte also suggests that houses with a poor BER will be taken off the market. I’m not sure that that is wise. It is rather tough on the current owners of such houses. It will also drive up rent particularly in the lower price segments.

UPDATE: 30.9% of houses have a BER of E, F or G.

Three good ideas, so, and one bad one. There is plenty of time to reconsider and refine.

COP17 in Durban

Today, the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) starts in Durban, South Africa. Unlike the summit of 2009 in Copenhagen, expectations are low. The political attention is firmly fixed on the economy. The negotiators will thus make the same demands that were rejected by their counterparts at previous conferences.

Climategate 2.0 broke last week, too late to influence official positions. Besides, the new batch of emails show more of the same. The main new element is the role of the BBC.

Some 20,000 people are expected to travel to Durban. These events are expensive, definitely when compared to the expected result. Some Irish civil servants are rumored to travel in style. This is not at the expense of the Irish taxpayer. Travel to climate negotiations is covered by the development aid budget. As the aid budget is fixed, Irish travel to Durban comes at the expense of people in Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia.

The low expectations for Durban are a blessing in disguise. I have argued that the current international climate regime is complete. The UNFCCC has standardized monitoring of emissions. The Kyoto Protocol / Marrakesh Accords has created international trading mechanisms for emission reduction credits. (Kyoto’s targets end in 2012 but the Protocol itself has no sunset clause.) The COPs have increasingly morphed into fora for pledge and review of domestic policies and targets. That is all that is needed, and all that is feasible (bar a transfer of sovereignty to the UN).

The negotiators in Durban should therefore focus on refining the existing mechanisms. That is quite boring stuff, so that hopefully the majority of the 20,000 in Durban will decide not to return to COP18 in Qatar or South Korea. UPDATE: It will be Qatar.

UPDATE: After pretending to be greener than Labour for a while, the Tories now argue that jobs are important too. This would put London on a collision course with Brussels. The UK will want to rid itself of the Large Combustion Plant Directive too.

UPDATE: Less than 72 hours after I predicted nothing much would happen in Durban, the EU changed its tune. Poland is not particularly keen on EU climate policy. They have the presidency. Talking tough, they at once please the greens and reduce the chance of success.

Revealed preferences for climate

Eight academic economists have left Dublin in recent months or will leave shortly. That may seem like a small number, but there are only 200 or so academic economists in the country. They all have moved / will move to warmer places: Stirling (2.0K warmer on average than Dublin), Brighton (2.2K), Oxford (2.2K), Canberra (3.4K), Melbourne (5.3K) and Lisbon (7.0K). Dublin economists thus disregard the opinion of the European Union that a climate change of 2.0K is dangerous.

Between 1998 and 2009, intra-union migration has been towards warmer places. The average migrant in the EU experienced a warming of 0.6K. The average masks a wide spread. About 10% of migrants stayed in roughly the same climate, 17% experienced a cooling of 2K or less, and 16% a cooling of more than 2K. 24% experienced a warming of less than 2K, and 33% a warming of more than 2K. 450,000 people opted to live in a climate that is more that 5K warmer than what they were used to.

Obviously, one cannot compare the individual impact of moving to a warmer climate with the impact of global warming, but at the same time it is clear that both Dublin economists specifically and intra-European migrants generally do not object to a warmer environment.

City climate data from World Guides. Country climate data from the Climate Research Unit. Migration data from EuroStat, for Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, United Kingdom.

Green growth

Sean and I have an article on green growth at Vox. It builds on a paper recently published in the Energy Journal. Research funded by the EPA.

Erratum: An fliuch mor

I recently wrote that Dublin does not use MapAlerter, a nifty internet service that allows county councils to alert people in particular areas by SMS, Email, Twitter, RSS. I was wrong. Dublin does use MapAlerter. It even issued a flood warning on Tuesday, October 25, 2011.