Policies for reducing personal carbon

Specialists in a broad range of areas relevant to combating climate change will consider how governments can best regulate individual contributions to global warming at an event organised by the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR) and the Cambridge Energy Forum.

Homes and personal transport account for half of the UK’s greenhouse gas pollution but strong political barriers face many of the proposed plans to deal with these emissions.

Panellists will give individual talks on a number of approaches to the problem, including a comparison of US and UK practice, fiscal methods of combating climate change and an overview of personal carbon trading, a method which allocates carbon budgets, with credits ‘spent’ with the purchase of fuel or electricity.

Speakers at the event will include:

• Terry Barker, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, an interdisciplinary body based at the University’s Department of Land Economy. He has edited or authored 12 books and 100 articles and was a lead author for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His research interests include greenhouse gas mitigation policy and world energy modelling.
• Dr Philip Sargent, an expert on international energy technologies and founder of the Cambridge Energy Forum, where he takes a lead in developing the work programme. He is currently working at Diboride Conductors Ltd., which he founded, which makes superconducting wire with Rolls Royce plc.
• Dr Adrian Wrigley, an entrepreneur, securities trader and independent policy analyst. As a policy analyst he has focused on the effects of tax and welfare policies on business, the environment and quality of life. On the entrepreneurial side, he is currently developing Match Markets, a new business to create an efficient marketplace for local services, transport and labour.
• Dr Richard Starkey, a research fellow at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He has conducted research into the feasibility and appropriateness of Domestic Tradable Quotas, a proposed carbon trading scheme. Dr Starkey is also assessing the support in philosophical works on distributive justice for the equal allocation of emissions rights at the heart of such an allocation.
• Dr Douglas Crawford-Brown, Emeritus Professor in Environmental Sciences and Engineering and Emeritus Director of the Institute for the Environment, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His activities focus on sustainability in the public and private sectors, including modelling alternative policies to tackle environmental problems.

Cambridge Energy Forum aims to focus, coordinate and support Cambridge’s academic, entrepreneurial and technological capabilities to develop the region as an international centre of energy expertise. It helps develop new processes, technologies and companies to contribute to the energy future of the UK and the world.

Policies for Reducing Personal Carbon will take place from 1:45pm on Friday 16 May in the Pitt Building, Trumpington Street.

The meeting is free but attendees need to register through the Cambridge Energy Forum website (see sidebar).

The full programme can also be viewed on the Cambridge Energy Forum website.