Social Cost of Carbon

Kevin Cromar Serves as Organizing Chair of Carbon Workshop

A technical workshop was held on May 27 to update the health functions used in economic models that estimate the social cost of greenhouse gases. Director of Health, Environment, and Policy, Kevin Cromar, was the organizing chair of the workshop funded by the U.S. EPA, CDC, and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Representatives from these agencies, as well as from the National Center for Environmental Economics, EPA Climate Science and Impacts Branch, and Health and Human Services, were joined by two dozen academic researchers in health and economics.

The work product will include a repository of published studies that associate changes in temperature with health endpoints (respiratory, cardiovascular, mortality risk, waterborne illnesses, infectious diseases, metabolic, mental health, renal damages, etc.), pooled damage functions that can be used by climate economists in models that estimate the social cost of carbon, and a report on how these values can be used and suggested improvements in how health impacts are considered in climate-policy decisions. This work meets a critical need for policy analysis in the United States and is to inform the social-cost-of-greenhouse-gas estimates that will be updated by January 2022, per Executive Order 13990.

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