Publications

To achieve ambitious environmental justice goals such as those set by the Biden administration, agencies will need a toolkit for assessing and weighing the distributional effects of policy options. Focusing on environmental justice, this report outlines procedures and methodologies that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) could apply to account for equity in the regulatory review process.

Leasing public lands and waters for fossil-fuel extraction drives a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Our new report offers analytic tools for federal leasing decisions to drive policies that maximize economic and environmental welfare—nationally and locally.

This report identifies best practices EPA should adopt to holistically assess and weigh the costs and benefits of risk management options, allowing the agency to meet its statutory obligations and best enhance public welfare.

Federal agencies will need to offer considered and detailed responses to objections raised in the notice-and-comment processes for individual regulations or administrative actions that apply the Working Group’s social cost valuations. Given its expertise, the Working Group should consider providing such responses now, so that agencies can then incorporate them into future actions. This report offers a blueprint for those responses.

The Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases can use the findings from expert elicitations to improve the U.S. federal government’s social cost of greenhouse gas estimates, which are used in regulatory cost-benefit analysis and other policy contexts. Our report highlights several component updates, incorporating data from expert elicitations, that the Working Group should consider during its current update of the social cost of greenhouse gas estimates.