APES

Emission Trading Game

Intro:

Directions:

The color white is now a pollutant. For each item of visible clothing that has ANY white on it (including shoes), you must pay 1 ticket. Each student is allowed 2 tickets and a packet of Smarties. If you do not have enough tickets to cover your “white pollution,” you will lose 1 lab point perwhite pollutant. You may attempt to “buy” (with Smarties), trade, etc. to gain tickets if you need. You will have 7-10 minutes in which to work to meet your White Pollutant Allowance Limitation.

Allowance Trading

Cap and trade programs use emission allowances as the currency to comply with emission reduction requirements. These programs display the following key features:

  • An emissions "cap": A limit on the total amount of pollution that can be emitted (released) from all regulated sources (e.g., power plants); the cap is set lower than historical emissions in order to reduce emissions.
  • Allowances: An authorization to emit a fixed amount of a pollutant.
  • Measurement: Accurate tracking of all emissions.
  • Flexibility: Sources can choose how to reduce emissions, including whether to buy additional allowances from other sources that reduce emissions.
  • Allowance trading: Sources can buy or sell allowances on the open market. Because the total number of allowances is limited by the cap, emission reductions are assured.
  • Compliance: At the end of each compliance period, each source must own at least as many allowances as its emissions.

Reflection questions:

1. How many items with the color white are you currently wearing?

2. Do you have a surplus, deficit, or equal amount of tickets to cover your White Pollution?

3. If you have a surplus, what did you do with it? If you had a deficit, what did you do? If you were equal, just write in “equal.”

4. Ask those who had to “buy” tickets… what seemed to be the going rate for purchasing White Pollution Allowances?

5. If this experiment continued for a week, how would that affect your clothing choice each morning?

6. In the game, what was your cap?

7. What represented your allowance?

8. What did the candy represent?

9. What specific type of pollutants was emissions trading authorized for? What are some of the effects of these pollutant?

10. What affect has emissions trading had on emissions of air pollution?

11. What is the difference between a primary and secondary pollutant?

12. What is the difference between dry and wet acid deposition?

13. What are some examples of both natural and human caused events that can lead to acid deposition?

14. What are 5 examples of the toxic effects of acid deposition?

15. Compare and Contrast post and pre combustion measures to reduce acid deposition.