Pacifying uncooperative carbon: examining the materiality of the carbon market

Abstract

This paper scrutinizes how greenhouse gases are ‘pacified’ so that they can become tradable in the carbon markets. To advance the economization programme and other materialist frameworks, I argue that the existing literature does not pay enough attention to the diverse modes of carbon accounting and, in particular, carbon measurement – the most basic step – is overlooked and undertheorized. Drawing from the ‘critical metrology’ approach, I suggest that we need to take carbon’s diverse materialities seriously in the study of marketization processes. Some carbons are more cooperative than others. I, therefore, argue that it is important to conceptualize ‘pacification’ as a dynamic process that is mediated through materials of varying capacities as well as standards and technologies. The empirical case examined here concerns carbon measurement standards at coal-fired power plants – an ‘extreme case’ in the sense that coal is well-understood and relatively easy to measure. My findings indicate that, even for one of the most ‘cooperative’ carbons, measurement uncertainties are significant and pose challenges for the marketization of carbon emissions. While human actors work to cope with these uncertainties, the contours of the market are ultimately constrained by carbon’s materiality.

Keywords:

• carbon markets
• critical metrology
• carbon measurement
• materiality
• economization
• coal-fired power plants

Notes

1 This paper uses the term ‘carbon’ loosely. By ‘carbon’ or ‘carbon emission’, I refer to the six greenhouse gases covered by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆). I use carbon emissions and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions interchangeably for convenience.

2 Energy industries account for 31.9 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in EU member states in 2010 (http://ec.europa.eu/energy/publications/doc/statistics/ext_greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_sector.pdf).

3 Electricity accounts for 32 per cent of the US greenhouse gas emissions in 2012 (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/sources/industry.html).

4 Data from US EPA’s ‘Emission Factors for Greenhouse Gas Inventories’ (http://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/documents/emission-factors.pdf).

5 For an introduction to the continuous emission monitoring system (CEMS), please refer to the ‘Plain English Guide to the Part 75 Rule’ published by US EPA (Note: Part 75 is the Acid Rain Program).

6 For an informative discussion on the two methods, see two rounds of comment and author’s response to Quick’s 2014 paper ‘Carbon dioxide emission tallies for 210 US coal-fired power plants: A comparison of two accounting methods’ in the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association. Dimopoulos also offers a good comparison table of the two methods in his chapter in Accounting for Carbon (Dimopoulos, 2015).

7 Please refer to the EPA’s calculation (http://www.epa.gov/ttncatc1/dir1/cs2ch4.pdf).

8 The interview was conducted in Chinese and then translated by the author.

9 For an accessible outline of EU ETS’s monitoring, reporting and verification system, see Chapter 5 ‘Trendsetter for companies and industrial sites: The EU Emissions Trading Scheme’ by Guillaume Jacquier and Valentin Bellassen in Accounting for carbon; for an up-to-date review on direct measurement method in EU ETS, see Chapter 10 ‘Direct measurement in the EU ETS’ by Chris Dimopoulos (2015), in the same publication; to access the original regulation, see EU Commission Decision of 18 July 2007 No. 2007/589/EC for the Monitoring and Reporting Guidelines (MRG) (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32007D0589); and EU Commission Regulation (EU) No 600/2012 for Monitoring and Reporting Regulation (MRR) (http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/monitoring/docs/gd1_guidance_installations_en.pdf).

10 See EPA’s ‘Continuous Emissions Monitoring Fact Sheet’ (http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/emissions/continuous-factsheet.html).

11 For details on verification and accreditation requirement in the EU ETS, see Commission Regulation (EU) No 600/2012. (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:181:0001:0029:EN:PDF).

12 According to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report published 2014, methane’s global warming potential (100 year) is 28. This number has been adjusted multiple times to reflect updated scientific understanding. The IPCC’s Second Assessment Report in 1995 calculated the global warming potential (100 year) for methane to be 21, and this is the value used in the Kyoto Protocol and its market mechanisms. The Third Assessment Report in 2001 and Fourth Assessment Report updated the figure to 23 and 25, respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) through the International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF), as well as the Vilas Research Travel Award, EU Center of Excellence Research Travel Grant, and the Crowe Scholarship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Notes on contributors

John Chung-En Liu

John Chung-En Liu is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Occidental College. Previously, he was the China Energy Policy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, United States. Liu has a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (United States), a master’s degree in economics environmental management from Yale (United States) and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from National Taiwan University, Taiwan. This paper is based on his multi-sited fieldwork in London, Brussels and Washington DC, as well as at many carbon market events around the world from 2012 to 2013.