[Peakoil] Carbon price and Peak Oil

[David Lattimore]

On 19/05/11 15:46, Alex Pollard wrote:
> http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2718670.html

That is interesting and fits well with my thoughts on the matter.  I 
think the main concern with the approach she talks about is the 
administrative cost of doing it that way.  It would need to be carefully 
structured in order to reduce administrative complexity.

> If the policy-makers don't have Peak Oil in mind then a carbon tax won't
> help reduce oil dependence that much, for example, oil is more energy
> dense than coal, so burning oil to make electricity is made more
> economical by a carbon tax?

Energy density (the amount of energy in a given volume of coal or oil) 
isn't what matters so much as energy intensity (the amount of CO2 
emitted per unit of energy produced).

The energy intensity of oil is about 30% less than brown coal, but about 
the same as black coal (see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_intensity).  But the real reason 
why I don't think that is likely to be a problem is that I suspect (I 
don't have numbers) that the current cost of electricity produced from 
oil is substantially more than that produced by coal.  So in order to 
make electricity generated from oil cheaper than that generated by brown 
coal, we would need a very high price on carbon.  A lot of the 
renewables would be cheaper than brown coal at a much lower carbon price.