Illustration: The Sun from SOHO solar laboratory, courtesy ESA & NASA

Individual people account for 40% of carbon emissions. David Fleming [1]developed a realistic scheme of tradable personal carbon allowances. Its object is to address the linked issues of global warming and energy limitation, across the whole of society. Climate chaos is advancing rapidly just as Peak Oil is arriving. So a creative carbon-rationing scheme offers a practical solution. Fleming’s Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs; pronounced ‘tex’) is a ‘cap and trade’ scheme that separates companies and government from individuals. It creates incentives to cease wasting energy and make do creatively with less. Any country introducing TEQs first establishes its carbon budget—tons of emissions permitted yearly. The budget is set 5 years in advance by a politically independent energy policy committee. In year 1, the budget matches actual current emissions. Thereafter it falls yearly. Everyone knows in advance how much less fossil fuel energy they will have to spend over the next 20 years.. The budget is shared between people, companies and government. People get their ration free; companies and public bodies must pay for theirs.

Your TEQ would come as units (1 unit=1 kg of carbon gas released). So when you buy petrol, gas or electricity from a coal-fired power plant, you surrender some of it electronically by debit card. If you consume less by year’s end, you sell the excess through electronic trading. If you consume more, you can buy more. Every year, the available pot of excess rations diminishes. The scheme offers an orderly, planned transition to a post-carbon economy. It offers incentives for business to develop, deploy and market carbon-neutral and energy-efficiency solutions. Renewable energy, zero-rated under TEQs, becomes cheaper than fossil fuels. Individuals get limits and incentives to participate in the transition to a viable future. The scheme is fair and redistributive–everyone in the country starts each year with the same quota. We all become stakeholders in the problem and in the solution, rather than everything being left as the exclusive responsibility of government and big corporations. TEQs empowers individuals and diminishes the collective feeling of helplessness about the critical survival issues of our time [1, 2].

1. http://www.teqs.net 
2. Strahan D. [2007] The Last Oil Shock