As the author of five Sustainability books, and a massive consumer of second hand books, I am all too aware of a massive misalignment of incentives. I only benefit if someone buys a new copy of one of my books. Anybody buying a used copy will get just as much utility from the book as from a new one (unless the previous owner commits that most henious of crimes and scribbles notes on it), at a fraction of the environmental impact, but I get nada, zilch, rien. So it is in my financial interest to encourage the consumption of more physical resources, but not to encourage reuse of resources already in the economy. So I’m incentivised not to practice what I preach in the books.

Well that’s what I thought, until one of the students I’m teaching at Newcastle Business School alerted me to the fact that the World of Books does give authors a small cut of the sale price of used books through the authorSHARE scheme. So if you are interested in buying one of my books, please check out World of Books first. There, I’ve done it.

This is but a niche example, but if we want a sustainable economy, we must identify and correct such misalignments. A more substantial disconnect is between the interests of landlords and tenants of commercial and residential rented properties. The landlord will generally determine the energy performance of a building (heat source, AC system, insulation etc) but doesn’t pay the bills, therefore they are incentivised to minimise capital costs often at the expense of running costs. Energy certificates etc can help but only really at the point of choosing a building, and many individuals and organisations can’t afford to be choosy. If a well off person/organisation moves to a greener building, the move doesn’t cut carbon overall if someone else moves in to the old one and switches on the heating. So landlords must be incentivised to do better regardless.

One hot topic in the press is the Zero Emission Vehicles mandate which requires motor manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of zero emissions vehicles or face penalties on the sales of excess fossil fuel based vehicles. While my contacts in the motor industry are sanguine about the challenge, I can’t help feeling that supply incentives should be backed by demand incentives so there is a pull to match the push. Of course if sections of the press really cared about the motor industry, they could stop spreading anti-EV myths, but hey… manufactured outrage sells papers/gets clicks.

Even within organisations, it is worth identifying and eliminating perverse incentives. Aligning incentives to what you are trying to achieve is an easy quick win.