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CLIMATE ECONOMICS

Recalculate the social cost of carbon

Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 293–294 (2021)Cite this article

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The science is ripe to update estimates of CO2 emissions costs. Calls to scrap the calculation are misguided.

To clarify this discussion, it is instructive to specify what the SCC is not. For one, it is not a carbon tax. Economists sometimes do not help their cause by (inadvertently) conflating the two, but calculating the SCC does not prescribe a particular policy. That is particularly true in the USA, where the government’s SCC is defined as the monetary value of the damages caused by one additional tonne of CO2 emitted. It is, thus, what enters on the benefit side of a benefit–cost analysis of any climate policy, from emissions standards for refrigerators to cars and power plants.

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  1. Department of Environmental Studies and Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Gernot Wagner

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  1. Gernot Wagner
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Correspondence to Gernot Wagner.

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Wagner, G. Recalculate the social cost of carbon. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 293–294 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01018-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01018-5

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