Short description of Individual Emission Rights for Flying Levy (IERFL)

 

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"Carbon inequalities within countries now appear to be greater than carbon inequalities between countries. The consumption and investment patterns of a relatively small group of the population directly or indirectly contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gases."

Chancel, L., Bothe, P., &  Voituriez, T., (2023). Climate Inequality Report 2023, World Inequality Lab 2023/1

 

 

Background

 

Since 2019 I have been working on a method that has the following goals:

• to reduce global warming by limiting flying for leisure purposes;
• to generate revenues and transfer those to sustainable mobility, by train, bus; also invest part of those revenues in sustainable energy projects in countries that do not emit a lot but that are suffering from climate damage;
• to promote social justice by rewarding citizens who do not emit CO2 by flying;
• to avoid shortcomings of existing tax measures such as EU ETS, Corsia and individual flying tax;
• to involve citizens in quantifying  the variables of the method;
• to promote broad awareness of the danger of climate change,  of biodiversity loss and of the link between CO2-emissions and social inequality of citizens within one's own country and between countries.

 

Description

 

In my plan, a government agency gives every citizen from the age of 16 (?) rights to fly every year.  The rights relate to traveling a certain distance, for example of 5000 kilometers. I call such rights Individual Emissions Rights for Flying (IERF).

 

Preferably, several countries, for example of the European Economic Area,  are involved in a IERF-plan. However, in order to speed up climate mitigation, an individual country could feel the urgency and could have the moral courage to take the initiative.

 

An IERF app will be developed. This digital app arranges the sale and purchase of IERFs by citizens and  keeps a database of citizens air travel data.

 

Citizens are informed about the availability of their IERF via an app for confidential data exchange between government and citizens (in the Netherlands we have an app called DIGID, in the European context there is eIDAS).

 

Citizens can access their IERFs by logging in on the IERF-app (my.IERF). Their identity is checked by the data exchange app that is similar with DIGID  or eIDAS.

 

What is the price of an IERF? The calculation of this is partly an empirical, partly a political question. Inputs for the calculation are: how large is the current carbon budget for aviation in the country or countries concerned, what is the severity of the climate damage at that time, what is the expected reduction of the total number of air kilometers thanks to pricing?

 

Three types of citizens using IERF

We can distinguish:

1. Citizens who do not want to fly, do not want to receive a reward and do not want to make their IERFs available to other air passengers. These citizens do not need to take action. Their IERFs will not be added to the reservoir of kilometers (explanation follows later).

 

2. Citizens who do not want to fly and who want to receive a reward for not emitting CO2 (and nitrogen, noise etc). They can sell their IERFs with one click.
   
   Suppose an IERF (of 5000 kilometers) costs 100 euros and each citizen within this category receives 50 euros of that amount The IERF app transfers the 50 euros to the citizen’s bank account.

 

The 5000 kilometers of the IERF that has beeen sold come into a reservoir of kilometers that is managed by the IERF app. The IERF is removed from the reservoir.

3. Citizens who want to fly specify their flight destination.
   
   

The IERF-app determines the “distance as the crow flies” in kilometers to that destination. If the distance of travelling back and forth is less than or equal to the distance of the citizens own IERF (in the example 5000 kilometres), no additional IERFs need to be purchased. If the distance is greater than that of his own IERF, a citizen must purchase one or more IERFs that are in the reservoir, i.e. previously sold by other citizens.

The process of selling and buying does not require any kind of interaction between individual citizens.

 

The IEFR app determines the price for a citizen based on the distance in kilometers, in the example (100 euros for an IERF of 5000 kilometers) 0.02 euros per kilometer.

 

The citizen deposits the euros for the purchase of kilometers for the wanted trip into the account associated with the IEFR app. The app creates a digital certificate for the citizen to make the trip.

 

Citizens can purchase flights as long as enough IEFRs are in the reservoir of the IEFR-app.

 

Extra rules in IERF

 

Distances in kilometers can be multiplied by a weight greater than 1 when nearby destinations are concerned that can be easily reached by train (for example Amsterdam-Paris) and when business class is chosen corresponding with much more space, thus emission, than economy class. The IERF app collects this additional information and computes the resulting distance measure in kilometers.

 

An progressive function between prize and number of kilometers can also be installed in the IERF-app so that a citizen who travels far away and frequently will have to pay prices that become gradually higher than 0.02 euro per kilometer.

 

Other characteristics

 

The validity period of IERFs and the refund of euros for unused certificates have been considered in my approach.

Diverse functions of the IERF-app, related with individual, private or with general, public information, are described elsewhere.

 

Buying a ticket

 

Ticket sites of airlines that are flying to and from the country or countries where IERF has been introduced must be somewhat adapted.

 

Such a ticket site must do four things:

1. When the citizen lives in a IERF-residency, check that the intended trip on the ticket site – destination, forth or/and back, comfort class - corresponds to the certificate of the IERF app.
2. Provide information to citizens about the result of the match. Cancel the purchase, when the match is absent.
3. After purchasing the ticket: inform the IERF app that the purchase has been successful.
4. Add a code to the ticket indicating that the match is OK.
   
   Perhaps this procedure can be made even simpler.

 

Check at the airport

 

At the airport on the day of departure, it must be checked whether tickets of passengers from the country/countries with IERFs have the necessary code printed on it.

 

Complications

 

• Cancellation of a trip.
• Double passports
• Evasive behavior, for example by train to Brussels, or by plane to Reykjavik, and from there with a ticket without IERF to another destination further away.
• Younger people (18-35) are the most eager flyers. Although the urge of young people to meet new countries, cultures and people is quite understandable this poses a difficult problem for IERF. 

 

Extra information

 

A more detailed treatment of IERF, in Dutch language, can be found at this page. 

 

 

Revenues of IERF

 

I did calculate the approximate revenues from IERF based on a database of flight data (from 4000 persons) from the Knowledge Institute for Mobility (KiM) in the Netherlands (121224). For 7 million flying Dutchmen (age 18-80) with the scheme of 0.02 euro per kilometer I computed a net revenu of approximately 1 billion euros a year.

For more information please see this page.

NB A further analysis based on new data from KiM is now in progress. I will report about my findings shortly.

 

Acceptance of IERF

 

The Social Cultural Planning Office (SCP) in the Netherlands conducted a survey study that is relevant to the acceptance of IERF (April 2024). The results can be found, in Dutch language, on this page.

Dutch citizens are concerned about climate change and they are willing to show more sustainable behavior themselves. This also includes flying less. They do want a clear framework from the government to adapt their behaviors. Contrary to what the government may suspect, “freedom and joy” are not the dominant needs of many Dutch people with climate change underway.

Respondents on the survey fear that if the government continues to act in the area of ​​climate as it has done so far, the financial inequality between rich and poor will increase.

Based on the above results it is my impression that the Dutch population will accept the IERF approach as meaningful, effective and fair.