President Joe Biden has reactivated the Obama-era approach to estimating the cost of climate change, a move that will revamp environmental regulations by establishing a much higher dollar value for greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
A document published by the White House in the Federal Register on Friday reinstalls the Obama administration’s interim values for the "social cost of carbon,” a figure that has been used to shape dozens of energy-related regulations. The Trump administration disbanded the interagency group responsible for the work and reduced the estimate to a small fraction of conventional values.
The social cost of greenhouse gases is an estimate of how much money the U.S. stands to benefit from avoiding each additional metric ton of emitted carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide, which are the three most important planet-warming gases. This measure is used in federal benefit-cost analyses to account for damage caused by fossil fuel, capturing impacts from pollution that aren’t reflected in the market prices for gas, oil, and coal.
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