"Fee and dividend" applies market forces to shape energy strategies in a world where man-made climate change is the single worst threat to the human future.  Currently, the fossil fuel market assumes that producers and consumers can use the atmosphere as a free-of-charge waste disposal site, with no consequences, or, at least relatively few beyond those the Clean Air Act set out to rectify.

In other words, the terrible cost of greenhouse gas emissions--climate disruption, broadening disease vectors, rising seas, ocean acidification--is not reflected in the "price at the pump". Fee and dividend would impose a regular, quantifiable cost to carbon pollution, thus levelling the playing field with clean energy technology that doesn't use our air as waste dump. 

The other advantage of fee and dividend over taxes and regulations is that the fee schedule is straightforward and universally applied. Producers could predict, exactly,  how the fee would affect their costs.