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by Niina H Farah and Lesley Clark (Politico) The agency quietly proposed a new price tag for the damages caused by greenhouse gas emissions, as the Biden administration faces ongoing Republican lawsuits over its use of the metric in crafting regulations.

EPA has proposed a new estimate for the social cost of carbon emissions, nearly quadrupling an interim figure that has already drawn legal challenges from a host of Republican-led states.

The metric puts a price tag on the damages created by each metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions. Agencies can then use it as part of their analyses of the costs and benefits of more stringent climate regulation on sources ranging from power plants and automobiles to the oil and gas sector.

The Biden administration has been using the Interagency Working Group’s interim value of $51 per metric ton of CO2. But earlier this month, EPA quietly proposed increasing that number to $190.

“This is a whole new process,” said Hana Vizcarra, a senior attorney at Earthjustice. “It’s definitely a rethinking of how they have done it before.”

EPA made the new metric public before a highly anticipated proposal from the IWG, which includes the agency. The working group, which originally planned to release its proposal in April, streamlines the approach to calculating the metric across the federal government. READ MORE

Study: Social cost of carbon should be 3.6 times higher (Politico)

Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO2 (Nature)

Social cost of what now? (Politico’s Power Switch)

How climate projects could trump ecosystems (Politico’s Power Switch)

How NEPA guidance could favor climate projects over ecosystems (E&E News Climatewire)

Excerpt from Politico’s Power Switch: But the metric could also have an unintended consequence: discounting the preservation of forests, marshes or even a scenic view, writes POLITICO’s E&E News reporter Jean Chemnick.

That’s because there is no comparable calculation for valuing other social and environmental goods, like waterways and other ecosystems, despite the benefits they provide. Forests absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, promote wildlife habitat and provide opportunities for recreation, among others.

Those benefits could get overshadowed by projects with more seemingly tangible effects on emissions under the administration’s new guidance for using the social cost of carbon.

For example, a transmission line that carries solar and wind power from rural areas to urban centers, slashing carbon pollution from the grid, could provide benefits to the tune of millions under an agency’s environmental review. But the wildlife refuge it crossed to reach the urban center wouldn’t have the same monetized value.

There are some federal efforts afoot aimed at assigning a dollar amount to environmental goods like preserving ecosystems. But those are typically cruder and more preliminary than the social cost of carbon, which is the product of more than a decade of analysis using peer-reviewed models. READ MORE

Excerpt from E&E News Climtewire: The White House interim greenhouse gas guidance could amplify climate considerations in a way that overshadows other environmental benefits, like preserving forests and wetlands.

The draft document, which directs agencies on how to treat climate change when reviewing projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, could show that things like solar arrays and transmission lines are more beneficial than protecting trees or marshes because of their potential for large-scale carbon reductions.

That’s because the guidance includes for the first time a monetary test to measure the costs and benefits of a project. And it’s weighted toward lowering emissions, due in part to the Biden administration’s soaring damage estimates from carbon dioxide.

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The NEPA guidance, released earlier this month, stressed that agencies must consider indirect and cumulative greenhouse gas emissions associated with a proposed project, not only on-site emissions. Add that to an updated social cost metric, and the premium associated with avoiding greenhouse gases could be astronomical.

In contrast to the previous NEPA guidance on greenhouse gases finalized in 2016, it gives agencies very little wiggle room to claim that a project’s aggregate contribution to climate change can’t be estimated.

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That prompts some experts to wonder whether this step toward cost-benefit analysis as a feature of NEPA review might cause other priorities like forest preservation, waterways or biodiversity to suffer by comparison — and perhaps to be sacrificed for projects that promise large climate gains.

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The bedrock environmental law was enacted in 1970 to ensure that agencies would consider values that were at the time unquantifiable — like the environment — alongside traditional cost-benefit analyses that typically favored economic considerations.

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The siting of transmission lines or large renewable energy developments are the kinds of projects where climate goals may compete with other environmental priorities.  READ MORE