The EPA released the third report in its series of cost-benefit analyses of the Clean Air Act today. Titled the Second Prospective Study, this report focuses on the effects of programs implemented after the 1990 amendments to the act.
The study used economic modeling to project a compliance cost of $65 billion in 2020, heavily outweighed by a projected benefits value of $2 trillion in 2020 that includes the prevention of over 230,000 early deaths.
But as we’ve noted, the EPA could do better in maximizing net benefits by increasing the stringency of its regulations. Watering them down takes a bite out of the value of net benefits, a downside obscured by the EPA’s use of more precise economic analysis.
Nevertheless, as Dean Richard Revesz said, the EPA’s findings confirm that attempts to curb regulation would provide corporate polluters small savings while the public incurs huge monetary and health costs.