By Hannah Hess
After years of clamoring for more information about the closed-door process that led to the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon estimates, a House committee has invited one of the economists behind the controversial estimate to testify.
Michael Greenstone, who served as chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in 2009 and 2010, will appear tomorrow before a joint panel of the Science, Space and Technology Committee that is examining the figure meant to help federal agencies quantify the estimated economic damage associated with an increase in CO2 emissions in a year.
In a blueprint released early in the 115th Congress by Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the committee announced it would prioritize the estimate, which it said has been used in the past to “push a costly climate agenda”.
Set at $40 per metric ton of CO2, the SCC is widely expected to be a target of the Trump administration’s push to roll back existing climate regulations. The figure has been used in more than 150 regulatory actions since 2008, according to the Congressional Research Service…
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