Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
11/15/13
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) demanded more information about how and why the Obama Administration updated its Social Costs of Carbon estimates—used to estimate the societal value of reducing carbon emissions—in a letter sent to Sarah Dunham, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Atmospheric Programs, this week. “These estimates are of great significance not only because they are used to justify costly and controversial regulations but also because the specific participants with any level of involvement in the process behind developing the estimates have been kept completely anonymous,” Vitter wrote. “The process of developing these estimates and the subsequent updates, including the ‘technical corrections’ recently issued, clearly contradicts the administration’s oft proclaimed commitment to openness and transparency.”
Vitter also posed questions to Dunham about the SCC at a Senate Environment and Public Works Oversight Subcommittee hearing last week, where Dunham said that the OAP participated in the administration’s Interagency Working Group, which developed the estimates. In his letter, Vitter expanded on some of his questions about the process posed at the hearing, asking for “a list of all program offices and officials that you know of who have participated” and “a list of all institutions and organizations outside the EPA that were consulted,” as well as asking “what procedures were followed by EPA during the IWG process so as to comport with the Agency’s own peer review and data quality guidelines,” whether “the FUND, DICE and PAGE models [were] peer-reviewed for the purpose of determining the value of the SCC for the United States,” if the “EPA develop[ed] its own science/data for the underlying scientific support for determining the 2013 SCC estimates,” and whether the “EPA support[ed] the decision to update the model estimates for the 2013 SCC.” He also asked Dunham to elaborate on why the estimates were adjusted and if the IWG reviewed the negative economic impacts of carbon pricing in other countries as it revised the SCC estimates.
The White House Office of Management and Budget released updated SCC values in May. After an outcry from some Republicans and groups representing high-emitting industries over what they charged was a lack of transparency in setting the new estimates, OMB announced it would allow public comment for the SCC and released some minor changes to the estimates.