This time it's personal

Will carbon allowances for individuals - with credits and penalties - cut carbon emissions? A growing movement thinks so

When Andy Ross takes a train journey, he does not just think about the cash he will have to spend, he also thinks about what it will cost him in carbon. That is because he's a "cragger" - a member of a Carbon Rationing Action Group (Crag), a growing network of community groups dedicated to cutting individuals' carbon emissions.

"Personal CO2 emissions make up about half of the UK's total," says Ross, who lives in Glasgow. "Crags give us all an opportunity to start contributing our fair share to reducing them."

Government campaigns now call on individuals to switch off lights and turn down their heating, but Crags go further by rewarding those who live a low-carbon lifestyle with hard cash, and by penalising those who live a carbon-profligate lifestyle. The idea is to encourage people to set themselves targets and timetables to reduce the amount they fly, drive and burn fossil fuels to emit as little energy as they can in their everyday life.

"Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat humanity has faced," Ross says. "Turning your TV off standby feels somehow incommensurate to the challenge."

The vision is ambitious and comes in part from David Miliband, the former environment secretary, now foreign secretary. As one of the Labour party's leading thinkers he envisaged a Britain in the future where carbon - which is embedded in everything and almost every action - was a parallel currency, with the heavy users paying the light users. "Imagine a country where carbon becomes a new currency. We carry bank cards that store both pounds and carbon points. When we buy electricity, gas and fuel, we use our carbon points, as well as pounds," he said.

Interest in personal carbon allowances has taken off in the past 18 months. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) has launched a three-year research project, Carbon Limited, into the subject. And a report commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) at the end of last year suggested that a nationwide system could be developed within five years.

Crags are made up of people who cannot wait that long. When a group forms, its members first work out their own carbon footprints. They then agree on a reduction target for the year - with most groups picking 4.5 tonnes, which is a little less than the UK annual average per person. Periodically, the Crag members will meet and compare notes. Then, at the end of the year, there is a "settlement" meeting, where participants tot up their emissions - with low emitters being rewarded, and over-emitters penalised.

"This will strike some as radical, pretty hair-shirt," says David Bassendine, a cragger in Kent. "But we're just paying the true environmental cost of our actions. Those who come in under the target benefit."

It is early days but some people have already had to pay up to £100. The money is not kept by any central body; it is redistributed to the craggers who have met the target. Members spend their earnings however they wish, though most invest in carbon offsets or local environmental charities. "The key aim of each group is to remain within its agreed emissions budget," Ross says.

Fair share

Small wonder, perhaps, that carbon allowances have found support among progressives. "Everyone gets the same - their fair share - of carbon credits," says Matt Prescott, director of the Carbon Limited project. "If you use up your share and need more, you can buy more credits. If you don't use all of yours, you can sell what's spare. Many people on lower incomes are also low emitters of carbon, so there are potentially big benefits here."

Crags are mainly small, mostly with 230 or fewer members for ease of operation and to build trust, but there are now nearly 30 operating around the UK. Groups are also being planned in France, Australia and the US.

Personal carbon allowances have also been taken up by NGOs and social enterprises. Cap and Share, run by economics thinktank Feasta, issues prototype "citizens' emissions entitlements". In the south-west of England, a Defra-funded initiative, Fair Shares, Fair Choice, has produced "the world's first personal carbon card" - albeit one printed on cardboard.

Others are more ambitious. The RSA has set up an online carbon trading platform, where 2,000 participants have logged their emissions and will soon have the chance to exchange credits. Economist Bernard Lietaer has set up a company in California, Carbon Systems, to come up with "the first genuinely personal consumer carbon tracking and trading scheme in the world". The company has a worldwide patent pending on the concept. Consultancy Design Stream has drawn up plans for "the emissary", a credit card that makes customers aware of the environmental impact of their shopping.

"Friends of the Earth had said that a carbon credits' system was years away," says Chaz Nandra, one of its designers. But credit card technology will advance to the point, he says, "that will be cheap enough to make this idea a commercial reality".

But not everyone is enamoured with the notion. Paul Monaghan, head of sustainability at the Co-operative Bank, has doubts: "The mechanics would be a nightmare. Think how hard it has been to get a meaningful EU emissions trading scheme." Others balk at the possible infringement of civil liberties in enforcing such a system. Then there is the timescale. "There is so much scope to cut carbon dioxide now without carbon credit cards," says Martyn Williams, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. Why waste time trying to explain a new approach?

Yet perhaps the public will be ready sooner than some think. A recent spate of books on low-carbon living attests to the growing popular understanding of climate change. There are now carbon coaches and green lifestyle advisers, low-carbon diets and carbon footprint websites.

But the key, some claim, is to get people acting this way habitually. Gill Seyfang, senior research associate at the University of East Anglia's centre for social and economic research on the global environment, talks about effecting behaviour change on a "whole different level" through schemes that "get people to think about being ecological citizens".

Green pledge cards are one way that has been tried - getting signatories to commit to being greener - but participants are only bound by their word. The charity Global Action Plan goes further, working with households for months at a time to slowly entrench low-carbon habits.

Whether the government considers personal allowances feasible is another matter. Defra is developing a work programme over the next few months and the support of the Treasury will be crucial. Community initiatives are to be welcomed; yet a Defra study admits that "almost no one has asked the public what they think about the idea". Until the government does so, it's up to crags and their counterparts to blaze the carbon-cutting trail.

