EcoCounts aims to reduce CO2 emissions via the introduction of carbon currency. They are implementing volunteering groups/studies in North London that assigns volunteers carbon budgets in attempts to show the social impacts of a carbon currency for payment on every product or service with a carbon footprint.
While the world of Business-as-Usual concentrates on carbon credits and offsets in a market that up to today hasn't proven its ability to aid decarbonisation, EcoCounts wants to bring a carbon price to the average person on the street.
They are seeking students volunteers to create and assess economics models in Minsky or Ravel to demonstrate the economic feasibility of introducing a carbon currency policy based on the concept of EcoCore's Carbon Accounts. The model should be interactive, able to show different forecasts for different approaches to implementing such a carbon currency. There are many different theories about the economic role of money, energy and CO2, so ideally the developed model would be adaptable to different schools of economic thought, as well as having numerous other input parameters.
Proposed Deliverables:
Economic analysis and forecasts in the form of an interactive Minsky or Ravel output model where the input parameters can be quickly edited to show the results of different assumptions.
The main aim is to shift demand away from the fossil fuel industry in the model whilst maintaining a stable economy, e.g. the amount of carbon currency for each period over the duration of the model would reduce either fast or slow.
Key details:
- Dual currency model to be created or extended in Minsky or Ravel
- The Carbon Currency model ideally should be able to take into consideration different economic schools of thought e.g., classical, Keynesian, MMT etc
- Students will have to branch the Minsky or Ravel open-source source code (in C++ and Javascript) to allow Carbon Currency to be modelled.
- Students could speak to and conduct interviews with economics experts to understand what evidence is useful to achieving the ultimate goal: provide confidence that introduction of a carbon currency is feasible and that bounds exist to rule out catastrophic economic impacts, and essentially to underpin confidence that the EcoCounts approach makes sense.
Roadblocks:
- Simulation software such as Minsky and Ravel currently only allow for models to include one currency instead of two (monetary and carbon currency).
Monthly meetings in the initial stages to discuss ideas on the code for the model, as the project progresses there can be bi-monthly meetings to refine the model more.
Preferred method of contact is a chat group with updates when necessary.
Project plan with milestones to be generated.