Personal carbon bank accounts

With all this talk of carbon credits and cap & trade, I started thinking about the possibility of personal carbon credits. In other words, if we continue to head in a direction where greenhouse gas emissions are measured, limited, and tradeable, it's not unrealistic that individuals would get in the game. So, just like a company that is "better than average" will be able to generate carbon credits that it can sell, a person who is "better than average" could potentially generate carbon credits for dollars. At last, revenge of the environmentalists!

As interesting as the idea is, I tend to think it won't happen. The primary reason is the difficulty of verification (e.g. who will certify that I rode my bike to work today?). Also, to the extent that certain activies are verifiable, the availability of the data and the ability of some third-party to access the data will invariably lead to privacy concerns (e.g. would you want your daily electricity usage to be publicly available?). And even though some of these issues can be overcome, we still have the sticky fact that limiting one's access to basic resources is anti-American (read: who's to say I'm only allotted 20 gallons of water per day?).

All that said, I can see a future where generating personal carbon credits will happen, albeit under a different name. As solar becomes more commonplace, it could become commonplace for utilities to credit individuals who give back to the grid. If a utility is able to buy and sell carbon credits, an individual's ability to sell solar energy to the utility essentially makes them a player in the carbon market.

For those who may stumble upon this post, my apologies for grossly over-simplifying a very complex scenario (but if you've read my other post you were forewarned). If you have something to contribute - especially if it helps to correct or clarify what I've written - by all means do so!

Kent
www.ecounit.com