In a newly published analysis, a team of researchers lists a series of measures the administration should consider in recalculating the social cost of carbon--a cost-benefit metric that places a monetary value on the impact of climate change.
The Biden administration is revising the social cost of carbon (SCC), a decade-old cost-benefit metric used to inform climate policy by placing a monetary value on the impact of climate change. In a newly published analysis in the journal Nature, a team of researchers lists a series of measures the administration should consider in recalculating the SCC.
“President Biden signed a Day One executive order to create an interim SCC within a month and setting up a process to produce a final, updated SCC within a year,” explains Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University’s Department of Environmental Studies and NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the paper’s lead author. “Our work outlines how the administration can use the latest research in ways that take into account storms, wildfires, and other phenomena that are more devastating today than they were when the SCC was first created.”
“Economic analysis is at the heart of the regulatory process in the U.S. and will therefore play a major role in shaping and informing the ambitious climate goals from the new administration,” adds David Anthoff, co-author and assistant professor of Energy and Resources at UC Berkeley. “Our recommendations offer a roadmap for how this can be done in a way that is both scientifically rigorous and transparent.”
Read more at New York University
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