Valuing Climate Damages


Book Description

The social cost of carbon (SC-CO2) is an economic metric intended to provide a comprehensive estimate of the net damages - that is, the monetized value of the net impacts, both negative and positive - from the global climate change that results from a small (1-metric ton) increase in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. Under Executive Orders regarding regulatory impact analysis and as required by a court ruling, the U.S. government has since 2008 used estimates of the SC-CO2 in federal rulemakings to value the costs and benefits associated with changes in CO2 emissions. In 2010, the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG) developed a methodology for estimating the SC-CO2 across a range of assumptions about future socioeconomic and physical earth systems. Valuing Climate Changes examines potential approaches, along with their relative merits and challenges, for a comprehensive update to the current methodology. This publication also recommends near- and longer-term research priorities to ensure that the SC- CO2 estimates reflect the best available science.




Assessment of Approaches to Updating the Social Cost of Carbon


Book Description

The social cost of carbon (SCC) for a given year is an estimate, in dollars, of the present discounted value of the damage caused by a 1-metric ton increase in CO2 emissions into the atmosphere in that year; or equivalently, the benefits of reducing CO2 emissions by the same amount in that given year. The SCC is intended to provide a comprehensive measure of the monetized value of the net damages from global climate change from an additional unit of CO2, including, but not limited to, changes in net agricultural productivity, energy use, human health effects, and property damages from increased flood risk. Federal agencies use the SCC to value the CO2 emissions impacts of various policies including emission and fuel economy standards for vehicles, regulations of industrial air pollutants from industrial manufacturing, emission standards for power plants and solid waste incineration, and appliance energy efficiency standards. There are significant challenges to estimating a dollar value that reflects all the physical, human, ecological, and economic impacts of climate change. Recognizing that the models and scientific data underlying the SCC estimates evolve and improve over time, the federal government made a commitment to provide regular updates to the estimates. To assist with future revisions of the SCC, the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (IWG) requested the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine complete a study that assessed the merits and challenges of a limited near-term update to the SCC and of a comprehensive update of the SCC to ensure that the estimates reflect the best available science. This interim report focuses on near-term updates to the SCC estimates.




An Unworthy Future


Book Description

It is difficult to find an area of public policy more plagued by misunderstanding than energy policy. Even worse, every time the subject is raised, we are obligated to get mired in pointless arguments about the weather. This book helps set the record straight. Not convinced? Consider some of these inconvenient truths: The cost of green energy climate remediation is anywhere from 10-to-1,000 times greater than the damage from the climate change it attempts to alleviate. Germany, the worlds leader in solar energy, will spend more than $280 billion by 2030 on solar subsidies. But all of that investment will only forestall 22nd century global warming by 37 hours. Obamas carbon tax would cost Americans $1.2 trillion over just ten years. But it would only reduce the midrange 3 degree modeled 22nd century global temperature increase by 0.038 degrees Celsius. At their current emissions growth rate, it will take China nine months to replace the entire U.S. emissions cut that Obama wants to achieve over seven years, at a staggering cost in American jobs and lost economic growth. The U.S. biofuel program imposes a cost on consumers 9,862 times greater than any climate benefit they or their distant progeny will ever derive. This is not another skeptical global warming polemic but an economic evaluation of how and why green energy will fail. The world has too many pressing needs. For the money Obama squandered on just a single bankrupt crony solar company, the U.S. could have prevented 300,000 childhood malaria deaths in poor countries. A thoroughly researched, heavily documented book by an expert in his field, it will demonstrate in meticulous detail how wasteful and economically inefficient Obamas green energy dead end future will be compared to other worthy alternatives. Its time to end the hysterical climate cynicism and get on humanitys side.




The Economic Analysis of Public Policy


Book Description

A critical analysis of public policy decisions requires a far greater depth of knowledge than can be received from news reports and political speeches. Issues such as how best to reduce traffic congestion, reduce acid rain, improve airline safety or develop a parcel of land are better understood by organizing, measuring and weighing the effects of alternative policies. The Economic Analysis of Public Policy, now in its second edition, is the ideal introduction to benefit-cost analysis, the economics of efficiency, risk analysis and present value, and is suitable for those with only a modest background in mathematics and economics. This brand new edition of the book has been rigorously updated throughout in terms of examples and data references, issues covered, and layout and pedagogical features. Key concepts are reinforced through multiple problems and discussion questions within each chapter. This latest edition contains extra material on loss aversion, global warming, technology, and US health care reform, as well as a wider range of international examples. Extra tables have been included in order to clarify more complicated issues. Instructors will also benefit from the new companion website, which will offer power point presentations, answers to end of chapter questions, and a test bank. This textbook encourages its readers to understand and apply key concepts whilst also learning to appreciate policy analysis as part of an interdisciplinary, analytical, and political process that can lead to better government policy decisions. It is an ideal teaching tool for undergraduate and postgraduate students engaged in Public Administration, Public Economics, and Public Policy.




Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling


Book Description

In this collection of 16 articles, top scholars synthesize and analyze scholarship on this widely used tool of policy analysis, setting forth its accomplishments, difficulties, and means of implementation. Though CGE modeling does not play a prominent role in top US graduate schools, it is employed universally in the development of economic policy. This collection is particularly important because it presents a history of modeling applications and examines competing points of view. - Presents coherent summaries of CGE theories that inform major model types - Covers the construction of CGE databases, model solving, and computer-assisted interpretation of results - Shows how CGE modeling has made a contribution to economic policy




The Design and Implementation of US Climate Policy


Book Description

"This book contains the proceedings of an NBER conference held in Washington, DC, on May 13-14, 2010"--Page xi.




Handbook of Sustainable Development


Book Description

This timely and important Handbook takes stock of progress made in our understanding of what sustainable development actually is and how it can be measured and achieved.ø




Warming the World


Book Description

This book presents in detail a pair of models of the economics of climate change. The models, called RICE-99 (for the Regional Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) and DICE-99 (for the Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy) build on the authors' earlier work, particularly their RICE and DICE models of the early 1990s. Humanity is risking the health of the natural environment through a myriad of interventions, including the atmospheric emission of trace gases such as carbon dioxide, the use of ozone-depleting chemicals, the engineering of massive land-use changes, and the destruction of the habitats of many species. It is imperative that we learn to protect our common geophysical and biological resources. Although scientists have studied greenhouse warming for decades, it is only recently that society has begun to consider the economic, political, and institutional aspects of environmental intervention. To do so raises formidable challenges of data modeling, uncertainty, international coordination, and institutional design. Attempts to deal with complex scientific and economic issues have increasingly involved the use of models to help analysts and decision makers understand likely future outcomes as well as the implications of alternative policies. This book presents in detail a pair of models of the economics of climate change. The models, called RICE-99 (for the Regional Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) and DICE-99 (for the Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy) build on the authors' earlier work, particularly their RICE and DICE models of the early 1990s. They can help policy makers design better economic and environmental policies.




Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources - Electric Utility Generating Units (Us Environmental Protection Agency Regulation) (Epa) (2018 Edition)


Book Description

Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources - Electric Utility Generating Units (US Environmental Protection Agency Regulation) (EPA) (2018 Edition) The Law Library presents the complete text of the Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources - Electric Utility Generating Units (US Environmental Protection Agency Regulation) (EPA) (2018 Edition). Updated as of May 29, 2018 In this action, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is establishing final emission guidelines for states to follow in developing plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired electric generating units (EGUs). Specifically, the EPA is establishing: Carbon dioxide (CO 2) emission performance rates representing the best system of emission reduction (BSER) for two subcategories of existing fossil fuel-fired EGUs-fossil fuel-fired electric utility steam generating units and stationary combustion turbines; state-specific CO 2 goals reflecting the CO 2 emission performance rates; and guidelines for the development, submittal and implementation of state plans that establish emission standards or other measures to implement the CO 2 emission performance rates, which may be accomplished by meeting the state goals. This final rule will continue progress already underway in the U.S. to reduce CO 2 emissions from the utility power sector. This book contains: - The complete text of the Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources - Electric Utility Generating Units (US Environmental Protection Agency Regulation) (EPA) (2018 Edition) - A table of contents with the page number of each section




Distributional Aspects of Energy and Climate Policies


Book Description

Governments around the globe have begun to implement various actions to limit carbon emissions and so, combat climate change. This book brings together some of the leading scholars in environmental and climate economics to examine the distributional consequences of policies that are designed to reduce these carbon emissions. Whether through a carbon tax, cap-and-trade system or other mechanisms, most proposals to reduce carbon emissions include some kind of carbon pricing system Ð shifting the costs of emissions onto polluters and providing an incentive to find the least costly methods of abatement. This standard efficiency justification for pricing carbon also has important distributional consequences Ð a problem that is often ignored by economists while being a major focus of attention in the political arena. Leading scholars in environmental and climate economics take up these issues to examine such questions as: Will the costs fall on current or future generations? Will they fall on the rich, poor, middle class, or on everyone proportionally? Which countries will benefit, and which will suffer? Students and scholars interested in climate change, along with policy makers, will find this lively volume an invaluable addition to the quest for information on this globally important issue.