Industry challenges new estimates of carbon’s social costs
WASHINGTON— Oil industry and business groups are asking the Obama administration to rescind its new calculation of the social costs tied to emitting carbon dioxide, amid fears the estimate will be used to justify proposed environmental regulations.
At issue is the government’s updated “social cost of carbon,” a metric used to evaluate proposed regulations that’s poised to play a big role in forthcoming mandates governing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The calculation aims to put a price tag on damage from each ton of emitted greenhouse gases, including lost agricultural productivity, health effects and more floods.
A government working group with representatives from the Energy Department, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental Quality and other agencies in May bumped the environmental price tag to $38 per ton in 2015, up from an estimated $23.80 in 2010.
But the calculations and modeling have been shielded from view, according to America’s Natural Gas Alliance, the National Association of Manufacturers and other groups that filed a petition Sept. 4 asking the government to redo the analysis “through a transparent, public process.”
They said the models are unreliable because they produced widely ranging estimates that then were averaged and forecast out over decades.
The industry push dovetails with action on Capitol Hill, where the House voted in July to block the Environmental Protection Agency from using the social cost of carbon to evaluate the merits of potential energy-related regulations, unless specifically authorized by Congress.
American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard said the decisions about the costs of greenhouse gas emissions belong in the hands of elected officials, not bureaucrats.
His organization and others say the calculations should be subject to peer review.
Administration officials have defended their approach.