Assessing the Costs of Regulatory Proposals for Reducing US Greenhouse Gas Emissions
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Reducing greenhouse gas emissions requires costly changes in behavior for firms and individuals. Various ways exist to measure these costs, but most economic analyses focus on changes in gross domestic product, prices, employment, and sometimes disaggregated impacts on particular sectors. Two recent studies by the Energy Information Administration and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provide insights into the range of costs associated with recent proposals for limiting US greenhouse gas emissions over the next several decades. This issue brief further emphasizes impacts in 2015 both because nearer-term modeling results are more reliable, and hence more informative, and because this timeframe is most relevant for the current policy debate.
