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1 H.R. 3117, Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulations Act of 2017 1 (February 16, 2018)

handle is hein.congrec/traheng0001 and id is 1 raw text is: CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE U COST ESTIMATE February 16, 2018 H.R. 3117 Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulations Act of 2017 As ordered reported by the House Committee on Natural Resources on November 30, 2017 H.R. 3117 would require federal agencies to use certain assumptions as part of their analysis when they consider the social cost of greenhouse gases as part of any rulemaking or justification for an agency action.1 For regulatory analysis, federal agencies currently may use estimates of the social costs of greenhouse gases as a way to quantify the costs or benefits of regulations that increase or reduce greenhouse gas emissions; agencies consider those effects along with other costs or benefits arising from proposed regulations. If federal agencies continue to use estimates of the social costs of greenhouse gases to evaluate a proposed rule or action, the bill would require them to: Use discount rates consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB's) Circular A-4 guidance to federal agencies;2 Consider only domestic, rather than international, costs and benefits of the activity; and Use only the most up-to-date and empirically estimated climate sensitivity distributions and realistic time horizons for climate change scenarios. H.R. 3117 also would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to submit a report to the Congress describing the number of agency actions that have used estimates of the social costs of greenhouse gases since 2009. 1. The social cost of carbon, the social cost of methane, and the social cost of nitrous oxide are estimates of the net present value of economic and other damages caused by the climate change resulting from one ton of each of those greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere in a given year. The estimates are expressed in terms of dollars per ton of each gas and use discount rates to combine the cost of damage incurred over long periods into a single, net-present-value estimate of the costs of climate change. 2. Discount rates are used in cost-benefit analysis to account for differences between cost and benefits over time, allowing for all benefits and costs to be considered in equivalent units at the present time. OMB's Circular A-4 instructs federal agencies to use discount rates of both 3 percent and 7 percent as a default, base-case scenario when performing cost-benefit analysis of all regulatory actions.

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