FAQs

Why the name Sandbag?

To us, the name Sandbag symbolises a positive coordinated action people take to protect themselves from natural disasters. It is especially apt given that sea level rise due to global warming is increasing the risk of flooding. Our name and mission sets us apart from the myriad of ‘climate this’ or ‘carbon thats’ out there.

After we had launched, someone pointed out that sandbags are used as a safety control in hot air ballooning – ‘hot air’ is a term used in emissions trading to describe the permits that become spare through no actually effort on the behalf of the owner – i.e. they were given them wrongly in the first place. We like this. Sandbag is all about controlling ‘hot air’ in emissions trading

The meaning of the phrase, ‘to sandbag’ in poker or legal cases is pretend you have a weak hand only to come out all guns blazing at the end and sweep to victory. This also appeals.

How are you funded?

We are 100% funded from three sources: the vast majority from charitable foundation grants, we make a tiny amount of money and donations from the permit cancellations service we offer and every so often someone asks us to do analysis or provide data and pays us for the service.

What’s your legal status and how are you governed?

We are a not-for-profit company or Community Interest Company as they are called. This means any surpluses we make are ploughed back in to the organisation and should we close any assets will be handed to on to a similarly constituted organisation.

We have a Board of Directors that meets regularly to oversee the management of the organisation. We submit our annual accounts to Companies House each year.

Do you just work on the EU ETS?

We initially focussed on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme because of its vast coverage and huge potential to drive emissions savings. Relatively short lines of text agreed in the EU dictated the future emissions that will be allowed across 40% of the EU economy. Recently, we have expanded our focus to work on other important highly leveraged policies such as phasing out coal and creating supportive frameworks to enable heavy industry to radically decarbonise.

We are mainly EU focused but we have from time to time done work on emissions trading in other pricing policy around the world including in South Korea and China.

Isn’t the ETS just one great big con trick designed to let polluters off the hook and make traders rich?

No. The caps created on emissions are real, long lasting (in fact they don’t stop until they reach zero at around 2070 under current rules) and legally enforced and they do change behaviours. But you’d expect us to say that, wouldn’t you. Carbon trading does have its drawbacks and we are as frustrated as everyone else that the early cap setting has been so lacking in ambition. However, it is political will that is the problem not the policy choice. Whatever the policy choice there would be the same hurdles and in fact because trading allows for flexibility in how regulated entities can comply the political pressure on trading policy is often less than for apparently more straightforward options like taxation and regulation. Harmonised taxation across all Member States is also not legally possible in the EU.

Does your move to work on other policies mean you are giving up on the ETS?

No we still believe emissions trading or cap and trade, as it is sometimes called, can be a very effective tool despite the problems being experienced currently. It certainly helps countries to sign up to targets if they know responsibility for reducing emissions lies with the companies making the investment decisions rather than with governments.

It is a necessary policy but it should never be seen as the only answer as some actions need to be taken now (like supporting the introduction of CCS) that will not ever be stimulated by a widely applied carbon price. This creates some tensions that need careful management as other policies – such as support for renewables, coal phase-outs or energy efficiency also act to reduce emissions in sectors subject to a cap. This can lead to problems if caps are not managed correctly. We explore this issue in more detail in this report and animation.

Doesn’t handing allowances to polluters remove my ability to reduce my own climate impact?

Yes to a certain extent this is true for actions we can take that reduce use of electricity since all these emissions are capped. This means any reduction we do releases emissions permits for someone in electricity companies to sell on. We therefore strongly defend the right for all citizens to buy and cancel allowances if they so choose so they can have an additional impact. We have set up a service that allows you to do that here. Transport and heating fuels for homes and offices are currently outside the cap so actions there are additional without needing to buy permits.