By Roger Caiazza
Here is another example of the weaponization of the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). Recall that the SCC is defined as the present-day value of projected future net damages from emitting a ton of CO2 today. This contrived parameter hurts the poor and ignores benefits from fossil fuels, includes flawed reasoning, and includes other inherent problems described by Willis Eschenbach here, here and here. The problem now is that it is being used to delay fossil fuel infrastructure.
The District of Columbia Circuit Court issued a decision in Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera v. FERC on August 3, 2021 which faulted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for failing to consider whether the social cost of carbon (SCC) is a “generally accepted” analytical tool for assessing the significance of greenhouse gas impacts under National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). According to John Mizerak at Lexology: “The decision is likely to result in additional agency engagement of the necessity of the SCC in project reviews, although the decision does not mandate the tool’s use going forward”.
In this case litigants argued that the FERC environmental impact statement for liquefied natural gas export terminals and pipelines in Texas should have considered the SCC. Although FERC quantified the greenhouse gas emissions from the construction and operation of the facilities, their environmental statements did not consider the “significance of the projects’ contributions to climate change”. The litigants argued that the SCC is a tool for estimating the cost of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions and should have been used in the FERC impact analyses.
I am not a lawyer and will leave the interpretation of the legal impacts of the decision to others. Mizerak states “Accordingly, on remand and in the future, FERC and other agencies will have to more directly evaluate the tool and the rigor of the science behind it. Proponents will argue that the social cost of carbon is the kind of ‘generally accepted’ theoretical approach § 1502.21 requires be incorporated into NEPA”.
On the other hand, I am an air pollution meteorologist who has spent a lot of time evaluating the environmental impacts of fossil fuel infrastructure. Predicting air quality impacts from polluting sources is a highly regulated process. Applicants submit their modeling protocols for review by regulatory agencies and eventually submit the results and input data to the agencies so that they can be reproduced as a final check on the submittals. Ultimately those analyses work their way into the environmental impact statements used to permit the application. Importantly if the modeling results show that the facility impacts result in ambient air quality less than the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and the change in the air quality is less than specific limits for acceptable changes, then the debate is over. The facility can get its air permits.
The use of the SCC in environmental permitting opens implementation issues for applicants. At the top of the list is how the SCC calculation will be used. If the permit application allows say 10,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year, then the SCC “significance” is the current value of the SCC times 10,000 tons. What do you compare that calculated value to? In this particular case, the exported LNG could be used to displace coal in which case it would be appropriate for the applicant to claim credit for those reductions relative to the LNG terminal operations. Because there are no quantitative regulatory limits the environmental impact significance decision necessarily becomes a qualitative one ripe for litigation by the usual suspects.
In conclusion, I cannot speak to the legal implications of this court decision. However, it will complicate and delay any permit applications because there is no recognized process for applying the SCC results in permit applications. As a result, because not only are the contrived SCC values are based on numerous value judgements, the interpretation of the results will suffer from the same flaw. This is a prescription for needless delay and arbitrary decisions.
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Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
“This is a prescription for needless delay and arbitrary decisions.” Like the lawfare being waged against the fossil fuel industry it fits the Globalist agenda.
The greater the delay, the greater the opportunity for bribery.
“…needless delay and arbitrary decisions.”
This is the purpose of ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ (SCC). How is it embedded in the permitting process? And who ultimately receives part or all of the tax?
It is not a tax. It is simply part of the contrived, arbitrary calculations one must perform in the Environmental Impact Assessment submission in order to get the permits to proceed. SCC drives up the environmental impact to create imaginary impacts that allow regulatory agencies to ***legally*** deny permits.
SCC is simply an artifice of the Leftists to allow regulatory agencies (controlled by a Democrat administration that has been bought and paid for by the EnviroNGOs) to deny permits, that otherwise they would have to okay. This cuts off success of legal court challenges that would happen if the permitting agency simply denies permits because it doesn’t like them.
That is why the SCC specifically excludes the huge benefits of fossil fuels. It is meant to put up a legal roadblock to extraction permits, power plants permits, etc.
“…imaginary impacts…” are the key words. AGW is based on and supported by imaginary science and statistics. Dr. McKitrick’s recent paper gutted the imaginary attribution statistics supporting the entire UN IPCC AGW global fairy tale.
McKitrick’s paper ought to be introduced into evidence for this court.
Hey judge, the whole foundation for CO2 being other than a benign gas has been called into question. What do you think about that? Maybe we shouldn’t be charging anyone for producing CO2. You think?
Considering that changing plausible assumptions in the calculation result in figures ranging from a benefit to a cost varying a vast amount, SCC is effectively useless except as a political talking point.
“This is a prescription for needless delay and arbitrary decisions.”
Using litgation to bring endless delays and making projects too costly for private industry via regulation has long been the watermelon’s main strategy. The watermelon’s are funded by folks investing wind and solar scams. Using environmental lawfare, combined with forum shopping for sympathetic judges, is simply seen as a cost of business in order to drive up costs for wind and solar energy’s competitors. In the case of minerals extraction activities (mining) like copper and rare earths (things the the renewable scams need), it simply drives these activities to countries wih lax standards and no sympathetic courts to litigate, i.e. like China.
Having affordable nuclear energy and affordable fossil fuel derived electricty makes even those subsidy harvesting schemes nonviable absent endless lawfare. Look what it did to the commercial nuclear power industry in the US. It has been natural gas that has displaced coal in the US power generation sector, and now the Biden Maladmin is coming after natural gas with methane leakage regulations. The regulations have one goal in mind, to steadily drive up the costs of natural gas and to eventually make the regulatory burden so large that new projects are never started. The methane leaks are small and inconsequential for CC, even if you accept the bogus GHG climate models, all they have to do is claim it does.
Perhaps more importantly, by establishing a figure for the future SCC, litigants can then sue or the Federal Gov’t can fine at a later date if those emissions are greater than the calculated SCC. Perhaps even shutting down the facility.
Rule #8: …Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance.
Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
One of the major considerations when applying for a Title V air permit for an industrial facility which will emit any regulated pollutant is “offsets”, meaning that credit is given if the proposed new facility will directly result in a reduction in emissions from some existing facility.
This is particularly interesting if a facility using natural gas is used to displace a facility burning coal or oil, which emit more SO2, particulates, and CO2 than natural gas, for the same energy production. In many cases, such a project actually decreases total pollutant emissions, and the EPA tends to approve such projects easily, if its arms aren’t twisted by lawsuits from ignorant “greenies”.
An LNG terminal does result in CO2 emissions, and relatively small emissions of other pollutants, and the total emissions attributed to an LNG terminal should include the emissions required to generate the power to run the large compressors for the refrigeration system. However, if the exported LNG would result in less coal or oil being burned wherever the LNG is to be used, credit should be given for the “offsets”, including for CO2 if it is regulated. If the LNG results in less total emissions than the fuels “offset”, the LNG facility should receive a CREDIT based on a “social cost of carbon”, and not be penalized.
I agree and I would be making those arguments if I were on a permitting team.
So if my plan to burn dung to generate heat to turn my turbine is rejected, then I can switch to LNG and claim carbon credits too, can’t I?
“Social Cost of Carbon” meet “Minority Report”
Guilty by what might happen.
Progressives love the idea of prosecuting Pre-crimes. Such a pre-crime scheme from Minority Report of course is what Orwell called ThoughtCrimes in his dystopina novel 1984.
But we are already there here in the US and the UK, In the UK, the arrest of Tommy Robinson in 2018, puts the UK well on the path to thought crime prosecution.
Here in the US we see thought control via CRT in our schools and institutions and labeling anyone who resists them as racist.
covid vaccine is the next social control
no vaccine no job no access to food etc
Joel O’Bryan you hit the bullseye. Our Green overlords are no different from Chinese communist propagandists or Joseph Stalin’s KGB torturers and murderers. Unless the angry paranoid Green zealots are stopped dead in their tracks now the trajectory of their efforts will surely lead to more violent control methods over their detractors as dissent grows stronger. It’s a well established historical fact that when irrational minds sieze absolute power they will corrupt themselves absolutely. It’s but a small step from torturing the truth to torturing the flesh.
The entire CAGW ‘threat’ is actually the minority report. The majority reports are just being memory-holed.
Arbitrary is what the socialists love.
When there is no law, then whoever has the most power rules. Period.
Leftists believe that they will always run government, so they want to free government from the confines of the law so that they can implement whatever policies they want.
As another example from today, a judge has ruled against a law involving illegal re-entry because it primarily impacts hispanics. The so called disparate impact.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-illegal-re-entry-case-disparate-impact-latinx
Disparate Impact Theory is a form of Critical Race Theory, where simply the evidence of unequal outcomes in one MUST mean there is unequal treatment by another group on that group. Pure Marxist thought at work.
“Pure Marxist thought at work.”
Yes, it is, and it looks like the judge has bought into it.
There’s a whole lot of undermining going on in our school systems today, and it’s been going on for decades, so we have a couple of generations where a lot of them have been brainwashed into the Marxist ideology, even if they don’t realize it, and it looks like we have a judge here who is a prime example.
This is what we have appeals courts for. Our system can survive a delusional judge or two.
What is the cost of 10,000 tons of CO2? I am in favor of the CO2 producing extra greening of the earth, to include foods, so wheat, at $0.13 per pound ($8.00 per bushel, and 60 pounds in a bushel) and an amount of 10,000 additional tons, has a value of $2.6 million, which should be paid to the oil producing companies. There, fixed it.
Currently in Tucson Arizona, gas is ~$3.gal. or $3/6lbs hexanes = $0.50/lb hexane
C6H12 + 12 O2 = 12 H2O + 6 CO2, so 1 mole hexane –> 6 moles CO2
1 mole hexane = 84 gram , 1 mole CO2 = 44 grams
(6 x 44) / 84 = 3.143, so 1 lb hexane produces 3.143 lbs of CO2
1 ton (US) = 2,000 lbs (US)
10 KT of CO2 could be made from ~7 million lbs of gasoline.
So… 6.36 million lbs of gasoline burned completely would produce 10 KT of CO2 and would cost you $3.18 million at today’s gas prices,
“I am not a lawyer and will leave the interpretation of the legal impacts of the decision to others.” While I full well understand this, based on small, but long dealings with the legal profession on environmental matters, I offer this small piece of counsel. First, the people operating, regulating and otherwise considering such actions rarely have adequate legal experience and more importantly understanding, and may not appreciate the obvious law that exists. Second, leaving legal matters to the profession is to allow another “appeal to authority.” While legal professionals are valuable, they must be held to the same standards we require from scientists. I have read a few supreme court decisions, very interesting how some stray from or ignore legal references. Ad hominem is not restricted to science.
There are no guarantees that judges will adhere to court rules of procedure if they get in the way of the outcome they desire.
Do it for the penguins in Alaska.
It is absolutely infuriating that made-up, unscientific concepts can so quickly be accepted by a so-called modern and rational society. Anyone can look at the weather patterns over that past century or millenium and see no significant trend (except the very welcome recovery from the Little Ice Age) and yet Climate Emergency dominates the headlines, to the point of being absurd. Social Cost of Carbon, that pretends that there are no advantages to safe, energy dense and reliable energy, and no Social Cost Of Unreliable So-Called Renewable Sources That Use Toxic Chemicals and Make People Sick Just From The Vibrations, just shows how brain damaged and corrupt government has become, dominated by insane environment green lobbies.
I’m going to catch a lot of flame for saying this, but once society accepted that a child in the womb is not alive or a human (in spite of the obvious kicking at least), it gave up claim to being a rational, science based society and joined the ranks of societies past that would offer sacrifices of life and blood to change the weather and keep the Sun coming up.
The UK Met Office can look at UK weather trends over the last 30 years and with authority tell me the UK is 6% wetter with more extreme rain events and that climate change is behind that to a high degree of certainty.
Come back and see us when you and the Met Office are 100 percent certain. That would include having evidence to back up any claims, otherwise it’s just someone’s opinion, no matter what degree of certainty they might have.
What does 6% wetter even mean? What does “more extreme rain event” even mean?
You are proving our point. Nonsense terms that are proven to an unmeasurable certainty.
Are you suggesting that a locale’s climate is determined by 30 years of weather?
I always understood climate to refer to the average weather over a period of 100s to 1000s of years.
Granted, my studies were prior to the common core method of mathematics and geography.
“UK weather trends over the last 30 years”
Remind me how old UK is? How old the island is?
“It is absolutely infuriating that made-up, unscientific concepts can so quickly be accepted by a so-called modern and rational society.”
It’s frightening to watch the “evil CO2” delusion work its way through society.
The foundation concept of “Social Cost” is prejudicial, betraying a lack of objectivity by its advocates in their quest to support a pre-determined agenda. An unbiased examination would frame the topic as “The Social Impact of Carbon” and fairly weigh the tremendous benefits of “carbon” (hereafter correctly referred to as carbon dioxide or CO2) and its fossil fuel sources. Indeed, any honest examination would conclude, based on empirically-derived analysis, that “The Social Benefit of Carbon Dioxide” is a more appropriate posit.
The root of this distortion is found in the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding, based on three lines of now discredited “evidence”, that anthropogenic CO2 is a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare.
Likewise, the Social Cost of Carbon Dioxide (SC-CO2) metric is derived from an average of three flawed Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) which are based on unrealistic climate model projections of greenhouse gas warming, as well as the use on unrealistic discount rate assumptions. Socio-economic assumptions of the IAM are obscured in “black boxes”, inaccessible for examination. Only one of these three IAM (the FUND model) considers the benefit of CO2 fertilization on the biosphere, and even then, this benefit significantly undervalues the empirically measured greening of the earth that enhances, not endangers, public health and welfare.
This distortion is documented in Climate sensitivity, agricultural productivity and the social cost of carbon in FUND by Kevin Dayaratna, Ross McKitrick, and Patrick J. Michaels (included as an attachment to this submission).
A white paper by Ken Gregory of Friends of Science is an example of analyzing the social impact of CO2 using realistic input factors (Social Cost (Benefit) of Carbon Dioxide from FUND with Corrected Temperatures, Energy and CO2 Fertilization.
The impact from anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and other well-mixed greenhouse gases remains unsettled science with a broad range of uncertainty. The IAM and the Interagency Working Group embrace equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) and improbable to implausible ECS-based scenarios known as Representative Climate Pathways (RCP) as the metrics to project warming and resulting socio-economic impacts. RCP8.5 is the most dubious scenario, requiring the combustion of fossil fuels vastly exceeding economically recoverable reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. Nonetheless, SC-CO2 calculus, and thus government policy, is improperly justified on this scenario.
Other deficiencies of the legacy SC-CO2 metric have been highlighted by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in their 2017 publication Valuing Climate Damages: Updating Estimation of the Social Cost of Carbon Dioxide. I agree with one conclusion of this work that the ECS metric, with its millennium time scale, is inappropriate for determining the SC-CO2, which is congressionally mandated to reflect to 2300. Rather we concur that the NASEM conclusion that Transient Climate Response (TCR), with its decadal timescale, and the use of a high discount rate, are more relevant to the calculation of the SC-CO2.
Unfortunately, this publication also telegraphs its bias by ignoring the tremendous positive impact on human flourishing brought by abundant, reliable, and inexpensive fossil fuels. Nowhere in their chapter on models for SC-CO2 calculation does the NASEM paper refer to the greening of the earth. It also slants toward validating models with other models rather than with empirical data. Its discussions on sea level rise and ocean acidification are speculative and not current science. For example, it is now recognized that plankton transport copious amounts of CO2 into the deep oceans in addition to the dissolution of inorganic carbon into oceans. This factor mitigates the buildup of atmospheric CO2, and it will continue to do so. Yet it is not considered in IAM or the NASEM critique.
Most recent literature estimates of ECS and the related Transient Climate Response (TCR) metrics are converging on less than a modest 1.2 OC warming from fossil fuel combustion, which, along with CO2 fertilization, will be beneficial to the biosphere, public health, and welfare.
Climate policy should be required to be based only on validated data that is available for public examination. It appears that the Social Cost of Carbon Dioxide calculus should be reexamined factoring in the benefits of modest warming and the well-established effects of CO2 fertilization.
‘The impact from anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and other well-mixed greenhouse gases remains unsettled science with a broad range of uncertainty. ‘
No, the impact is settled, with the (negative) range of outcomes in a relatively tight band
According to your reasoning, we can say the same in the opposite direction:
The impact is settled, with the (POSITIVE) range of outcomes in a relatively tight band.
Why? Because science is studying it since Justus von Liebig (at least; some people started earlier; for instance, Thomas Jefferson) and has it well characterized.
Griff, grow up! You cannot make an analysis using just the costs and ignoring the benefits! Actually, the WORLD, the society work the other way round: first, analyses the (potential) benefits; then, analyses the (potential) costs; then, it makes a subtraction to evaluate the (expected) balance.
And why does it act in this way, in this exact sequence, without changing the position of each step? Simply because there is no use in spending money on the analysis of an idea if there it is not a potential source of income! An also because there is no use in trying to evaluate the costs/harm of anything that does not yet exist.
Simple as that!
Could you follow me? Should I make a sketch? Or there is any personal limitation of yours to understand such a simple reasoning?
“No, the impact is settled, with the (negative) range of outcomes in a relatively tight band”
Griff says without any evidence at all. What’s your confidence level, Griff?
Griff, genuine question. You certainly believe that the negative effects of fossil fuel burning exceed the benefits. Do you believe there are any benefits at all to burning fossil fuels? Is there some advantage to being able to, for example, drive a car, or produce electricity? What is the calculation for offsetting any benefits against detriments?
I understand the cost analysis, even if I don’t agree with it, but I don’t see the corresponding benefit analysis anywhere.
Am I missing some part of economic theory ? Isn’t the “Social Benefit” at least what people are willing to pay ? So driving up the cost to reduce consumption just increases the SB per unit of production.
How about the social costs of abandoning fossil fuels, the adverse impact on economies and economic prosperity of the people?
Ask the leftists to provide accounting to explain what net zero emissions would look like.
“How about the social costs of abandoning fossil fuels, the adverse impact on economies and economic prosperity of the people?”
Yeah, what about that?
I think the people trying to do away with fossil fuels are eventually going to fail miserably, for a variety of reasons. Eliminating fossil fuels in a short period of time is not going to happen. A CO2 tax is just counter-productive in our society. It will increase costs to society, but it won’t eliminate fossil fuels.
Marxism exemplified.
LOL. Marxists don’t do renewables or climate change.
In other words, Marxists don’t do Marxism. Do you actually listen to what you say?
Actually, that is an astute observation.
The “natural superiors” as Marx referred to them are the ones who make the rules for thee, but not for me.
Does anyone really believe that politicians like Bernie Sanders would ever give up their wealth to create an equal and just society?
Nope, they want to distribute your wealth, not theirs.
What do Marxists do, Griff?
Griff (and everyone else) ought to read Mark Levin’s new book “American Marxism”. Mark has a special chapter in the book devoted to marxism and climate change.
The whole point of SCC, and CO2 regs in general, is to have an excuse to reject economic development that is fully protective of the environment. This is weaponized none-science.
Weaponized none-science is becoming SOP for government. It is the basis of the past year and a half of COVID measures. It has always been the basis of “climate change” but also routinely used by EPA for bumping up benefits of stricter regulations of otherwise dubious benefit.
Carbon (C) pricing?
Then why talk about Carbon Dioxide (CO2)?
And why did they stop talking about “greenhouse gas emissions”?
Sales and marketing based on research to find wha bestt fools people, politics of climate hoax.
“Carbon (C) pricing?
Then why talk about Carbon Dioxide (CO2)?”
Confusing isn’t it. They want to tax something they can’t even properly name.
Calculating the “Social Cost of Carbon” is like some wise guy trying to sell the statue in the Lincoln Memorial of Washington to an ignorant tourist who does not know its significance and history. The wise guy never says that he is NOT the owner of that statue, that he has no right to sell it: he just refers to the benefits to the potential buyer and asks for a down payment…
From the article: “Here is another example of the weaponization of the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). Recall that the SCC is defined as the present-day value of projected future net damages from emitting a ton of CO2 today.”
What damage? Carbon Dioxide is a benign gas essential for life on Earth.
There is no evidence CO2 is doing any damage to anything.
Taxing carbon dioxide is a scam meant to put money in politicians hands. That’s all it is.
From the article: “Although FERC quantified the greenhouse gas emissions from the construction and operation of the facilities, their environmental statements did not consider the “significance of the projects’ contributions to climate change””
I would like to see *that* report. FERC supposedly knows how much this contributes to climate change? If they know this, then they ought to tell the people at the IPCC because the IPCC can’t prove that CO2 is doing anything.
More unsubstantiated assumptions about CO2. This time made by a judge in a court room. Does this judge do “confidence levels” in his court room. He must if he is depending on the IPCC for his information.
Guilty or Not Guilty, jury? Well, your Honor, we have a high confidence level that CO2 is not guilty.
The social cost of carbon is unambiguously negative (positive net benefits). If anything we should be subsidizing it not taxing it.
A NEPA review only applies to Federal government projects or Federally funded projects. NEPA reviews are not part the of permitting process for private parties.
So, unless this project received federal funding, I don’t see any justification of the application of the NEPA review process on this project. And it their would be no justification to the application to any project that is neither a Federal project nor Federally funded project.
This looks like a complete misuse of the NEPA regulations.
Well on further investigation, I’m going to have to reverse myself. Under 40 CFR § 1508.18.
(a) Actions include new and continuing activities, including projects and programs entirely or partly financed, assisted, conducted, regulated, or approved by federal agencies; new or revised agency rules, regulations, plans, policies, or procedures; and legislative proposals.
So, yes, regulating actions would be covered.
Don’t like it but I was wrong on this point
Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. More CO2 does however improve crop yields.Hence the social cost of Carbon is zero.