Adam G. Bumpus

Accumulation by Decarbonization and the Governance of Carbon Offsets

Abstract This article examines the governance of international carbon offsets, analyzing the political economy of the origins and governance of offsets. We examine how the governance structures of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism and unregulated voluntary carbon offsets differ in regulation and in complexity of the chain that links consumers and reducers of carbon, with specific consequences for carbon reductions, development, and the ability to provide “accumulation by decarbonization.” We show how carbon offsets represent capital-accumulation strategies that devolve governance over the atmosphere to supranational and nonstate actors and to the market.

Win-Win Scenarios at the Climate-Development Interface: Challenges and Opportunities for Cookstove Replacement Programs Through Carbon Finance

Achieving win-win outcomes in environment-development programs is a laudable goal, but frequently difficult to realize. In this paper we review the possibilities for win-win climate and development outcomes in programs that distribute improved efficiency cookstoves (ICS) with the use of carbon finance. We show that ICS technologies form an important, if asymmetrical, environment-development interface, and illustrate the mutually supported local (development) and global (climate change) benefits of continued improved stoves use. We also describe how program results are highly contextual and that, in practice, there are a number of challenges to achieving effective ‘win-win’ outcomes. While carbon finance provides an opportunity to fund scaleable and enforceable stove programs, it may also introduce mutually supported impediments. Drawing on development debates for ICS use, scientific reports on stove-based greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, and preexisting case studies of carbon and non-carbon financed cookstoves, we conclude that the challenge for future carbon financed ICS projects will be to leverage inherent symbioses between climate and development arenas in order to overcome mutually supported impediments. Achieving substantive win-win conditions will require further scholarly and practical engagement to tackle the many outstanding challenges and uncertainties reviewed in this essay.

The Global Political Ecology of the Clean Development Mechanism

This article explores the ways in which the “global” governance of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) intersects with the “local” politics of resource regimes that are enrolled in carbon markets through the production and trade in Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs). It shows how political structures and decision-making procedures set up at the international level to govern the acquisition of CERs through the Kyoto Protocols CDM interact with and transform national and local level political ecologies in host countries where very different governance structures, political networks, and state-market relations operate. It draws on literature within political ecology and field work in Argentina and Honduras to illustrate and understand the politics of translation that occur when the social and environmental consequences of decisions made within global governance mechanisms, such as the CDM, are followed through to particular sites in the global political economy. It also shows how the outcomes in those sites in turn influence the global politics of the CDM.

Firm responses to a carbon price: corporate decision making under British Columbia's carbon tax

Top-down economic approaches theoretically show that placing a price on carbon can reduce emissions. Responses by firms to these policies, however, are less well understood and are critical for understanding the effectiveness of price-based carbon policy. This article provides an analysis of firm-level responses to the carbon tax in British Columbia (BC) through empirical research of grey literature, industry participation, and interviews with executives of major emitting firms in BC. The article highlights the empirical responses to the tax by firms, who experience difficulty in making low-carbon changes in response to fluctuating commodity prices, the low certainty of climate policy over temporal and spatial scales, and the political economy of implementing regional climate policy. It also highlights the importance of understanding firm-level responses as a complementary approach to macro-economic policy making on carbon pricing. The article shows the importance of engaging decision makers in corporations to understand how carbon is governed in light of emerging climate policy. Policy relevance This article is relevant to policy makers implementing carbon-pricing initiatives by illustrating the need to complement macroeconomic models with firm-level response analysis. It also demonstrates the key concerns of executives in a resource extractive economy and the ability of a carbon price, and the need for complementary technology funds and policy, to affect change in industrial emissions.

The Rise of Voluntary Carbon Offset Standards: Self-Regulation, Legitimacy and Multi-Scalar Governance

Although there is growing recognition in the academic literature of the role of non-nation state actors such as cities and large corporate emitters in climate governance, little attention has been paid to ‘carbon offset organisations’, a new set of largely private sector actors who develop carbon reduction projects and sell the resulting credits. In this paper we investigate the emerging self-regulation of the voluntary carbon market as companies set quality standards in order to respond to criticisms and to anticipate and steer government rules. These standards aim to provide a legitimacy that can support both innovation and credible carbon reductions driven by the private sector, rather than imposed by regulatory policy. We critically assess the evolution of these standards through in-depth case studies and explore the attempted state regulation of the voluntary market in the UK. These raise important issues about authority and legitimacy, and rescaling of environmental governance that is devolved to non-nation state actors over multiple scales. We discuss these movements within the broader literature on neoliberal natures, environmental standards and the critical geographies of the carbon economy.

Social virtual energy networks: Exploring innovative business models of prosumer aggregation with virtual power plants

Virtual Power Plant (VPP) have been proposed as an effective way to aggregate large portfolios of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and coordinate them to behave as a single functional unit in both the network and the market. This research narrative proposes that business models that can combine Internet platforms such as Peer-to-peer networks, with VPP to collectively manage DERs, are ideal systems for socially innovative business models to accomplish scale and replication and drive systemic change in the power system. This project lays conceptual foundations to design and simulate such a system. An urban social electricity-trading network is presented using the City of Melbourne as case study. Modelling is performed by applying an optimisation framework to a portfolio of household datasets with solar, simulated storage and flexible demand capabilities; a local community windfarm and large business buildings. Initial simulations show that internal energy trading between members of such a social energy network is highly dependent on local market conditions. However, having the ability to simultaneously operate as a small-scale generator, retailer and demand response coordinator might be the factors allowing these alternative business models to be feasible under various conditions.

Perceptions of adaptation, resilience and climate knowledge in the Pacific: The cases of Samoa, Fiji and Vanuatu

Purpose While the South Pacific is often cited as highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, there is comparatively little known about how different groups perceive climate change. Understanding the gaps and differences between risk and perceived risk is a prerequisite to designing effective and sustainable adaptation strategies. Design/methodology/approach This research examined three key groups in Samoa, Fiji and Vanuatu: secondary school teachers, media personnel, and rural subsistence livelihood-based communities that live near or in conservation areas. This study deployed a dual methodology of participatory focus groups, paired with a national mobile phone based survey to gauge perceptions of climate change. This was the first time mobile technology had been used to gather perceptual data regarding the environment in the South Pacific. Findings The research findings highlighted a number of important differences and similarities in ways that these groups perceive climate change issues, solutions, personal vulnerability and comprehension of science among other factors. Practical implications These differences and similarities are neglected in large-scale top-down climate change adaptation strategies and have key implications for the design of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and therefore sustainable development in the region. Originality/value The research was innovative in terms of its methods, as well as its distillation of the perceptions of climate change from teachers, media and rural communities.