Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
penalty on fossil fuels (and as an implicit subsidy for renewables). In these
albeit exceptional circumstances, many hankered after the carbon price
certainty that a tax would have given.
Regulation
Progress towards greener energy sources can also be stimulated by
regulation. This could, for instance, dictate that a product should meet
a minimum standard of energy efficiency, or that a certain percentage
of energy that a company produces should be renewable. Increasingly,
developed countries require minimum efficiency standards for a wide
range of products, ranging from gas boilers to electric appliances, wash-
ing machines, consumer electronics, light bulbs and so on. Even though
many of these products are now made in developing countries, the most
important market for them is in developed countries, which can use
their buying power to impose their standards. In the UK, for instance,
the Energy Saving Trust has developed an “Energy Saving Recommeded”
certification that appears on all new white goods. The EU has its own
“European Union Energy Label”, which all new washing machines must
carry, and a small number of high-quality machines can even carry the
“European Eco-label”.
Regulation can achieve spectacular results. The best example of how
effective they can be is that of the US Corporate Average Fuel Economy
(Café) standards, first introduced in 1975. This enormously improved
the fuel efficiency for all US vehicles - from an average of 12.9 miles per
gallon in 1974 to an average of 25mpg by 1981. But this rate of progress
was never sustained because the Café standards were never seriously
tightened. After a long stagnation in US conservation efforts, president
Barack Obama proposed a renewed tightening of Café standards in May
2009, aiming to raise the minimum fuel efficiency standard by 2016 to an
average of 35mpg for all vehicles. The president had been strongly urged
to make this move after his administration's March 2009 bailout of the
bankrupt US car companies.
Although regulation has so far tended to be mostly focussed on effi-
ciency standards and energy conservation, governments are increasingly
intervening to influence the mix of different energy sources and set tar-
gets for low-carbon forms of energy. The EU has adopted a target for a
minimum twenty percent average renewable share in all EU energy by
2020, with national targets for its 27 member states. Within this, there is a
sub-target for biofuels. Many individual US states have similar renewable
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search