Interior report on oil&gas leasing ( unfortunately focuses on increasing value to the taxpayer, not on climate considerations. Missed opportunity - and not what Pres. Biden requested in EO 14008.

Worth noting that Rhodium assumes no CEPP or carbon tax - but instead has EPA power sector regulation starting in 2026 that achieves 80% system-wide emissions reduction in 2030 for existing sources + 90% CCS for all new sources starting 2022.

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. making a Paris target of 50-52% reductions economy-wide by 2030 feasible.

So now maybe a carbon tax in reconciliation? We ran some numbers over the weekend. A $20/tax + extension of the renewable tax credits would reduce power sector emissions by 80% (2005 base) by 2030, with small effect on prices.

I think too of the late Gary Chamberlain, one of the first to recognize the importance of the Angirst-Imbens work and a great (high-standards) mentor while both were doing this work at Harvard Econ. Gary would have been very proud.

Great Nobel prize to Card, Angrist, & Imbens! Angrist & Imbens revolutionized empirical economics by providing constructive ways to have much more confidence in causal estimates. A huge step for the profession and very well deserved prize.

climate policy space & is one of the key contributions that economists have made to [climate science]." Both the RFF and Chicago/Berkeley teams have made great strides in providing solid science behind the SCC.

My quote, that "nobody in their right mind would attempt to do [the calculation]" was taken out of context. That sentence goes on: "the fact that 2 such distinguished teams are really putting a huge amount of resources into this really underscores who important this is in the. .

Nice opinion piece in NYT about Brookings paper last week on the large amount of great new research on the Social Cost of Carbon. But one quibble. .

Second gen biofuels for SAFs - ones with a 80% life cycle GHG reduction relative to petroleum jet fuel - have a lot of potential but will require sustained support so we can learn their true costs at commercial scale.

I'm concerned that the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) tax credit working its way through reconciliation will miss an opportunity to support second gen deep decarbonization fuels - and the 3 B gal-by-2030 goal will be filled by diverting soy biodiesel to soy renewable jet fuel.

But one policy – RPSs – helped to drive down the cost of wind and solar, making power sector decarbonization now plausible. To seize that opportunity we need the courage to enact effective and durable policies going forward (eg, smart CES).

The upshot is that the gains we have made so far are “luck”, both good and bad: the financial crisis and slow recovery, COVID-19, and the decline in natural gas prices. So while yes big change is possible, policy didn’t play much of a role historically.

Next, GDP: Here, EIA projected 3.1% 2003-2025 (wouldn’t that have been nice!) compared to 2.0% actual 2003-2019 (1.7% including 2020).

But EE growth 1990-2003 was also 1.9%! So all the post-2000 attention to EE (Energy Policy Act of 2005, EISA of 2007) didn’t noticeably move the dial on economy-wide EE. EE policy is important, but not a big contributor to economy-wide or power sector emissions reductions.

Next, measuring energy efficiency in the power sector is hard (turning down the heat is conservation, weatherization is efficiency). But EIA 2005 projected economy-wide EE improvement of 1.6% annually 2003-2020, but in reality was 1.9% 2003-2019. So EIA was a bit pessimistic.

First, 92% of the decline in coal production (nearly the same as electricity generated by coal) through 2016 is attributable to lower natural gas prices, not air regs or RPSs, although RPSs might have helped somewhat later