It is the subject of significant interest from the UK Government, and is explicitly designed to address both climate change and peak oil.
This was later changed to TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas) due to confusion caused by the word "domestic" in the original title.
[1] David Fleming first published on the TEQs model in June 1996 (although at this time he used the name DTQs - Domestic Tradable Quotas).
Working with Richard Starkey of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Fleming was eventually invited to give evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, and this was followed by a Ten Minute Rule Bill, presented to Parliament by Colin Challen MP on July 7, 2004.
TEQs were by that time widely discussed in books, academia and the research world, and in 2006 David Miliband, then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Energy to produce a scoping study into the idea.
[6][7] The headline finding of the 2008 pre-feasibility study was that "personal carbon trading has potential to engage individuals in taking action to combat climate change, but is essentially ahead of its time and expected costs for implementation are high".
[10] This finding was challenged by numerous research groups, including the UK Parliament's own Environmental Audit Select Committee, who stated that "although we commend the Government for its intention to maintain engagement in academic work on the topic, we urge it to undertake a stronger role, leading and shaping debate and coordinating research".
[11] In 2011, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil produced a report, jointly authored by David Fleming and Shaun Chamberlin, pulling together the various critiques and urging the Government to move forward towards implementation of TEQs.
[12][13] In 2015, Chamberlin, Victoria Hurth and Larch Maxey authored a peer-reviewed paper on the design, history and necessity for TEQs, arguing that the carbon pricing approach to climate policy is doomed to fail, and should be replaced by TEQs' hard cap on emissions.
There are two reasons why such a scheme may be needed: Climate change: to guarantee achieving national carbon reduction targets.