Carbon-CAP Tool

This tool provides a summary of policy instruments that might underpin consumption-based reductions in national and global carbon.

Each policy instrument was assessed against a sub-set of criteria. The analysis considered political, legal, social and administrative barriers to implement each policy instrument at a sufficient scale, geographically and in terms of economic sectors. In evaluating instruments, there was a distinction between ‘theoretical effectiveness’, meaning the effectiveness suggested by models (for example global macroeconomic models in the case of price mechanisms used to drive consumption changes ), and ’empirical effectiveness’, meaning the measured impact on consumer behaviour and related carbon emissions. There was a significant gap between expected and actual performance of policies; therefore, the focus was placed largely on empirical experience.