Even with a long list of Environmental Protection Agency regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of nearly $30 billion a year, it will require another $45 billion annually to achieve President Obama’s climate change goals, according to a report issued Thursday.
Obama is trying to cut emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, a pledge the administration has made in the run-up to final negotiations in Paris next month on a global climate deal.
The report by the conservative American Action Forum asks, “What are the benefits of these investments?”
The EPA estimates that regulations, including the landmark Clean Power Plan that requires states to cut emissions one-third by 2030, will keep the Earth’s temperature from rising 0.0574 degrees Celsius, according to the group. Meeting the president’s 2025 goals “could add reductions up to 0.125 degrees Celsius.”
The United Nations deal seeks to ensure the average global temperature does not rise above 2 degrees over the next two decades. More recent studies out of Europe suggest it will likely require actions to reduce the average temperature of the planet by 3 degrees, saying the current commitments under the U.N. deal may not be adequate.
“In other words, full achievement of the president’s climate goals will cost more than $73 billion in annual burdens to alleviate less than two-tenths of one degree of warming,” the study finds.
“As the world meets in Paris at the United Nations (UN) Conference on Climate Change during the first two weeks in December, it is important to take note how the U.S. has already regulated greenhouse gases,” which many scientists blame for causing global warming, according to the study obtained by the Washington Examiner.
“Regulators have already imposed $26 billion in annual costs to limit [greenhouse gases] and have proposed an additional $1.7 billion” in rules to continue a course of cuts across a number of sectors, the report reads.
But that won’t even come close to meeting Obama’s goal of cutting the nation’s emissions over the next 10 years to meet its international obligations, and at substantially greater cost.
The report bases its finding on the latest Energy Information Administration projections that show the U.S. will emit 5.49 billion tons of greenhouse gases by 2020. The baseline includes all regulatory and legislative actions as of October 2014. The report says even when using the president’s older target of a 17 percent reduction from 2005 levels, it would mean the U.S. would still be 303 million tons away from the 2020 goal, the study shows.
The report includes the effect of 15 regulations the EPA has imposed to reduce emissions. Five of the most significant include: the Clean Power Plan and other climate rules for power plants; and fuel economy rules for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. The total cost of the rules is $229 billion.
“Yet, despite the heavy costs of regulation now and the questionable future benefits, regulators will continue to issue new rules to address climate change” at additional cost, the study warns.
The White House says the commitments the Obama administration is making in Paris is “ambitious,” but “grounded in intensive analysis of cost-effective carbon pollution reductions achievable under existing law and will keep the United States on the pathway to achieve deep economy-wide reductions of 80 percent or more by 2050.”
The administration says it will do that while delivering “ever-larger” consumer savings over time.
