Heritage Foundation Sparks Debate, Calls for Social Cost of Carbon Elimination Despite Non-Zero Value
The Heritage Foundation has sparked debate with its policy recommendations, calling for the elimination of the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), despite its technical analysis showing a non-zero value. The foundation's white paper and the Trump administration's directive have brought the SCC's future into question.
The Heritage Foundation's white paper argues for the SCC's elimination, claiming uncertainties in its estimates. However, their technical analysis using the GIVE model, developed under the SCC Initiative and peer-reviewed by the EPA, shows the SCC's robustness. The model, created by the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Germany, estimates the SCC to be within $100-$200 per ton of carbon dioxide, even considering changes outside the current state of the science.
The GIVE model, freely available for transparency and improvement, accounts for uncertainties in future population growth, economic growth, greenhouse gas emissions, and other relevant climate change factors. The appropriate response to uncertainty, as the model demonstrates, is to systematically assess and quantify it.
Despite the Heritage Foundation's policy recommendations and the Trump administration's directive, the technical analysis using the GIVE model supports the SCC's continued use. The SCC, estimated to be within $100-$200 per ton of carbon dioxide, remains a valuable metric for understanding the cost of carbon emissions. Further assessment and quantification of uncertainties are encouraged to refine this estimate.
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