How much does it cost for a given climate solution to eliminate (abate) a metric ton of CO2 emissions?
With plug-in hybrid vehicles, that ton costs around $12. With wind power, it's $20. With carbon capture and storage at coal-fired power plants, it's $44.
How much does that same ton of CO2 abatement cost using these behavioral programs? -$165. No, that's not a typo. It's a negative sign. As in: $165 worth of profit per ton of carbon pollution reduced.
If similar programs were expanded nationwide, Allcott and Mullainathan estimate a net value -- savings minus costs -- of $2,220,000,000 a year. Of course much research and testing remains to be done before it's clear whether these programs perform equally well at scale, but as a first approximation, that's not too shabby.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/327/5970/1204
http://web.mit.edu/allcott/www/papers.html (original paper: moderator)
Norm Ruttan
President
iWasteNot Systems
Canada
www.iwastenotsystems.com
