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Emissions Trading As ‘Civilizing Markets’

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Emissions Trading As ‘Civilizing Markets’ Abstract This thesis critically engages Michel Callon’s argument that emissions trading schemes have the potential to ‘civilize markets’, thereby preventing the worst effects of global warming. For Callon, this entails the building of institutions to collectively reflect on markets’ successes, overflows and externalities. This thesis situates Callon’s proposition in the history of civil regulation and neoliberal challenges to the authority of expert bureaucratic knowledge upon which such regulations have depended. It argues that civil scientific ‘framing’ is crucial for liberal government insofar as it has reconciled the economic demands of industry with social concerns about overflows. Civil science – science accountable to industry, publics and policy- makers – has historically played an important role in constructing the economy as a calculable object whose coherence and boundaries can be taken for granted by economic policy makers, especially contemporary advocates of emissions trading. Integrating concepts from Governmentality Studies and Material Sociology, I challenge liberal narratives of the experimental development of emissions trading from sulphur to carbon. Such narratives occlude the pivotal role of expert measurement by neglecting the role of offsets in existing carbon permit trading systems. This thesis examines three baseline measurements, their verification and contestation: the offset credits in the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme; Australia’s land-clearing emissions submitted under obligations to the Kyoto Protocol; and several methodologies in the Clean Development Mechanism. Neoliberal claims that marketization will provide superior outcomes to regulatory approaches are shown to err by ignoring the complex, labyrinthine agencements involved in making markets work. I propose the term Regulatory Neo-liberalism to situate historically the dissonance between this complexity and the neoliberal claim that markets can process information more effectively and efficiently than civil bureaucratic experts. I conclude by outlining a politics that confronts this dissonance. Towards a Politics of Regulatory Neoliberalism: a critique of Michel Callon’s ‘civilizing markets’ thesis Declan Kuch Doctor of Philosophy (2012) Table of Contents: Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 1 Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... 2 Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations ...................................................................... 4 List of Figures .................................................................................................................. 6 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Emissions Trading as ‘Civilizing Markets’ ................................................... 12 Chapter 2: Marketizing Civil Regulation: Acid rain regulation as the experimental bridge to carbon markets ............................................................................................. 44 Chapter 3: Governing Carbon Emissions: Expertise, Neo-liberalism and the politics of carbon offsets in New South Wales ............................................................. 81 Chapter 4: The Techno-politics of Classification: Rules and Exceptions in Carbon Accounting .................................................................................................................. 123 Chapter 5: ‘Economists in the Wild’: Clean Development and the Global Politics of Carbon Offsets ........................................................................................................ 159 Chapter 6: Regulatory Neo-liberalism and the Incivility of Carbon Markets ............. 188 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 206 Appendix A: NSW Pool Calculations ........................................................................... 210 Appendix B: Note on Interviews ................................................................................. 210 References .................................................................................................................. 211 Kuch 3 Acknowledgements I cannot imagine how I would have completed this thesis without the support and encouragement I have received from my family. Thankyou especially to my private army of proof readers: Anna, Peter, Faye and Liz for the careful reading of earlier drafts of this thesis. I am also deeply indebted to my fellow arts postgraduates for the passionate, good -humoured discussions in writing groups, over coffees, lunches and dinners over the years of research and writing. Thank you especially to Demelza Marlin, Florence Chiew, Noela Davis, Ben Manning, Laura Fisher, Emma Wortley, Nick Apoifis and the other members of the Post-Graduate Research Student Space at UNSW. A special thanks to Michelle Jamieson and Daniel McLoughlin for your enduring friendship. Thank you also to James Arvanitakis and Stephen Webb for your invaluable support. Crucial aspects of Chapters 3, 4 and 5 were developed through discussions with my fellow Australian Youth Delegates to COP15 as well as with fellow Energy Policy Group Discussants at UNSW. Thank you especially to Long Seng To, Jacqui Hicks, Nick Cutler, Fergus Green and Josh Wyndham-Kidd. And to my colleagues and friends at the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets I am enormously grateful. Iain MacGill, Rob Passey, Hugh Outhred, Regina Betz, Martin Jones, and Paul Twomey demonstrated a rare combination of ingenuity, graciousness, good humour and passion in all dealings with climate and energy policy I have witnessed. It has been an immense privilege to work alongside you during this momentous period in Australian government. Your help and support in so kindly explaining much of the rich history and arcane details of emissions trading in Australia and overseas has been tremendously valuable. Crucial theoretical claims made in this thesis were developed from exchanges over emails and coffees with many generous scholars whose work I hold in the highest esteem. Thank you especially to Gary Edmond, Cathy Waldby, Jo Faulkner, Melinda Cooper, Mitchell Dean, and Ben Golder and the attendees of the UNSW Biopolitics reading group and the University of Sydney Marx reading group. Most of all, thank you to my supervisors: to David Miller for your professionalism, good humour and for rekindling my interest in 19th Century history. Thank you, most of all, to Stephen Healy, without whom this project would never have begun, for encouraging for me to pursue this topic and specifically the many problems around measuring and commodifying greenhouse gases. Thank you for your boundless energy. Kuch 4 Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations AGO: Australian Greenhouse Office AIJ: Activities Implemented Jointly: Voluntary Pilot Phase' of the flexible mechanisms that allowed industrialized countries (Annex I Parties) to implement projects in other countries that reduce emissions of greenhouse gases or enhance their removal through sinks. CDM EB: Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism: an institution with wide ranging powers, including deciding on rules and modalities for project eligibility such as assessing methodologies for baseline measurements against which emissions reductions can be claimed1. CDM: Clean Development Mechanism: Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol establishes a mechanism whose role is to assist industrialized countries (non-Annex I Parties) in achieving sustainable development and in contributing to the ultimate objective of the Convention, and to assist industrialized countries in achieving compliance with their quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments CER: Certified Emission Reduction: a permit issued by CDM administrators equal to one metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent, calculated using global warming potentials from the 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report. CFL: Compact Fluorescent Lightbulb COP: Conference of the Parties – highest level meeting of signatory Parties (nation- states) to the Kyoto Protocol DNA: Designated National Authority: (certifies CDM projects according to nationally defined sustainability criteria) DOE: Designated Operational Entity (private company responsible for auditing project documents for CDM registration) DSA: Demand Side Abatement rule under the NSW GGAS ESD: Ecologically Sustainable Development ESF: Electricity Sales Foregone IPART: Independent Pricing and Review Tribunal – NSW utility regulatory body responsible for both the compliance and audit of the NSW GGAS Kyoto Units: each flexible mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol has units intended to represent one metric tonne of CO2 equivalent. Jurisdictions vary on their allowance of Kyoto Units for compliance with domestic climate legislation. A CER is the Kyoto Unit for the Clean Development Mechanism. LULUCF: Land-use, Land-use Change and Forestry NCAS: [Australian] National Carbon Accounting System 1 The Foundation for International Law and Development outlines the full range of their powers here: http://www.cdmguide.net/cdm16.html (accessed 15 January 2010). Kuch 5 NGAC: New South Wales Greenhouse Abatement Certificate: the tradable instrument of the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme NGO: Non-Governmental Organization NGRS:
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