Resources

EPA’s Updated Estimates of the SC-GHG

  • EPA Final Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases

    This report presents EPA’s updated SC-GHG estimates. As explained on this website, EPA’s valuations are the best federal estimates developed to date.

    November 2023

  • External Peer Review Report

    External peer reviewers praise EPA’s updated SC-GHG values as a “huge advance,” a “significant step,” and a “much-needed improvement” that “advanc[e] our state of knowledge” and “represents well the emerging consensus in the literature.”
    May 2023

Interagency Guidance on Using the SC-GHG

Government Reports on Methods for Valuing the SC-GHG

  • New York’s Value of Carbon Guidance

    Starting in 2020 (and with periodic updates since), New York has valued greenhouse gas emissions using a central discount rate of 2%. This link provides the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s latest guidance on valuing climate damages.
    August 2023

  • Government Accountability Office Report

    Highlights the SC-GHG’s history—including its use by states and foreign countries—and urges the federal government to implement the National Academies’ 2017 recommendations.
    June 2020

  • National Academies of Sciences 2017 Report

    Calls for updates to the Interagency Working Group’s methodology to reflect new economic developments. EPA incorporated these recommendations in its 2023 update.
    January 2017

  • National Academies of Sciences 2016 Report

    Largely endorses the Working Group’s estimates and recommends against a near-term update based on new climate science.
    January 2016

  • Washington State Department of Commerce Guidance

    This report from the Washington State Energy Office highlights several reasons to use low discount rates to monetize climate damages, including the intergenerational nature of climate damages and the fact that existing damage models omit many key climate impacts and thus understate the SC-GHG.
    September 2014

Prior Federal Estimates of the SC-GHG

  • Interagency Working Group 2021 Technical Support Document

    The Working Group’s latest technical support document readopts its prior estimates and adjusts them for inflation. It also acknowledges that recent evidence calls for using lower discount rates and calls for agencies to apply higher SC-GHG values using lower discount rates. The Working Group also made its annual values and data runs available as Excel files.

    February 2021

  • Interagency Working Group 2016 Technical Support Document

    The Working Group’s 2016 technical support document introduces the social cost of methane and the social cost of nitrous oxide.
    August 2016

  • Interagency Working Group Response to Public Comments

    The Working Group’s 2015 response to comment document further justifies its use of global valuations and consumption-based discount rates, among other methodological choices.
    July 2015

  • Interagency Working Group 2013 Technical Support Document

    The Working Group’s 2013 technical support document incorporates updates to the underlying damage functions that increases its estimates of the social cost of carbon.
    May 2013

  • Interagency Working Group 2010 Technical Support Document

    The Working Group’s initial technical support document develops interagency social cost of carbon estimates but recognizes that they likely undervalue the true costs of climate damage—a recognition repeated in all future technical support documents.
    February 2010

  • EPA 2008 Technical Support Document

    The George W. Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency endorses the use of global climate-damage values at discount rates of 2–3%. Although data and science has since greatly developed, these two principles continue to inform the EPA’s estimates.
    June 2008