IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/nceewp/348913.html

The Social Costs of Hydrofluorocarbons and the Large Climate Benefits from their Expedited Phasedown

Author

Listed:
  • Tan, Tammy
  • Rennels, Lisa
  • Parthum, Bryan

Abstract

Hydrofluorocarbons are a potent greenhouse gas, yet there remains a lack of quantitative estimates of their social and economic costs. The present study addresses this gap by directly calculating the social cost of hydrofluorocarbons (SC-HFCs) using perturbations of exogenous inputs to integrated assessment models. We first develop set of direct estimates of the SC-HFCs using methods currently adopted by the United States Government, and then derive updated estimates that incorporate recent advances in climate science and economics. We compare our estimates with commonly used approximations based on global warming potentials to show that using the latter is a poor proxy for direct calculation of hydrofluorocarbon emissions impacts using IAMs. Applying our SC-HFCs to current international agreements, we estimate they provide $37 trillion (2020USD) in climate benefits over the lifetime of the agreement. Expediting the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons could increase the estimated climate benefits to $41 trillion (2020USD).

Suggested Citation

  • Tan, Tammy & Rennels, Lisa & Parthum, Bryan, 2023. "The Social Costs of Hydrofluorocarbons and the Large Climate Benefits from their Expedited Phasedown," National Center for Environmental Economics-NCEE Working Papers 348913, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:nceewp:348913
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.348913
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/348913/files/2023-05.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.348913?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Schmalensee, 1993. "Comparing Greenhouse Gases for Policy Purposes," The Energy Journal, , vol. 14(1), pages 245-255, January.
    2. Richard G. Newell & William A. Pizer & Brian C. Prest, 2022. "A Discounting Rule for the Social Cost of Carbon," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(5), pages 1017-1046.
    3. Marten, Alex L. & Newbold, Stephen C., 2012. "Estimating the social cost of non-CO2 GHG emissions: Methane and nitrous oxide," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 957-972.
    4. Alex L. Marten & Elizabeth A. Kopits & Charles W. Griffiths & Stephen C. Newbold & Ann Wolverton, 2015. "Incremental CH 4 and N 2 O mitigation benefits consistent with the US Government's SC-CO 2 estimates," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 272-298, March.
    5. Dharik S. Mallapragada & Bryan K. Mignone, 2020. "Correction to: A theoretical basis for the equivalence between physical and economic climate metrics and implications for the choice of Global Warming Potential time horizon," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 273-275, January.
    6. Hope, Chris & Anderson, John & Wenman, Paul, 1993. "Policy analysis of the greenhouse effect : An application of the PAGE model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 327-338, March.
    7. Anthoff, David & Hepburn, Cameron & Tol, Richard S.J., 2009. "Equity weighting and the marginal damage costs of climate change," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 836-849, January.
    8. repec:aen:journl:1993v14-01-a10 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Dharik S. Mallapragada & Bryan K. Mignone, 2020. "A theoretical basis for the equivalence between physical and economic climate metrics and implications for the choice of Global Warming Potential time horizon," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 107-124, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christian Azar & Jorge García Martín & Daniel JA. Johansson & Thomas Sterner, 2023. "The social cost of methane," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 176(6), pages 1-22, June.
    2. Richard S.J. Tol, 2021. "Estimates of the social cost of carbon have not changed over time," Working Paper Series 0821, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    3. Daniel J. A. Johansson & Christian Azar & Susanne Pettersson & Thomas Sterner & Marc E. J. Stettler & Roger Teoh, 2025. "The social costs of aviation CO2 and contrail cirrus," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Richard S. J. Tol, 2021. "Estimates of the social cost of carbon have increased over time," Papers 2105.03656, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    5. Adam Michael Bauer & Cristian Proistosescu & Gernot Wagner, 2023. "Carbon Dioxide as a Risky Asset," CESifo Working Paper Series 10278, CESifo.
    6. Alex L. Marten & Elizabeth A. Kopits & Charles W. Griffiths & Stephen C. Newbold & Ann Wolverton, 2015. "Incremental CH 4 and N 2 O mitigation benefits consistent with the US Government's SC-CO 2 estimates," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 272-298, March.
    7. van der Ploeg, Frederick & Emmerling, Johannes & Groom, Ben, 2022. "The Social Cost of Carbon with Intragenerational Inequality under Economic Uncertainty," RFF Working Paper Series 22-08, Resources for the Future.
    8. Krupnick, Alan & Darmstadter, Joel & Richardson, Nathan & McLaughlin, Katrina, 2015. "Putting a Carbon Charge on Federal Coal: Legal and Economic Issues," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-13, Resources for the Future.
    9. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    10. Morgan R. Edwards & Jessika E. Trancik, 2022. "Consequences of equivalency metric design for energy transitions and climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 175(1), pages 1-27, November.
    11. Yassine Charabi, 2021. "Digging deeper into cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in the era of volatile prices," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 1-15, February.
    12. Richard S J Tol, 2018. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 4-25.
    13. Anthoff, David & Rose, Steven K. & Tol, Richard S. J. & Waldhoff, Stephanie, 2011. "Regional and Sectoral Estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon: An Application of FUND," Papers WP375, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    14. Döll, Sebastian, 2009. "Climate change impacts in computable general equilibrium models: An overview," HWWI Research Papers 1-26, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
    15. Pycroft, Jonathan & Vergano, Lucia & Hope, Chris & Paci, Daniele & Ciscar, Juan Carlos, 2011. "A tale of tails: Uncertainty and the social cost of carbon dioxide," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 5, pages 1-29.
    16. Joseph E. Aldy & Robert N. Stavins, 2025. "Rolling the Dice in the Corridors of Power: William Nordhaus’s Impacts on Climate Change Policy," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Economics of Environment, Climate Change, and Wine Selected Papers of Robert N Stavins Volume 3 (2011–2023), chapter 3, pages 31-52, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Huang, Jiaoyuan & Bruno, Christopher C. & Shah, Farhed A., 2020. "Climate Change and the Role of Public Policy in Sustaining Agricultural Growth," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304377, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Ingmar Schumacher, 2014. "The Aggregation Dilemma," Working Papers 2014-224, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    19. Matthias Schmidt & Hermann Held & Elmar Kriegler & Alexander Lorenz, 2013. "Climate Policy Under Uncertain and Heterogeneous Climate Damages," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 54(1), pages 79-99, January.
    20. Joseph, Lambert & Giles, Thomas & Nishatabbas, Rehmatulla & Tristan, Smith, 2021. "A techno-economic environmental cost model for Arctic shipping," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 28-51.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:nceewp:348913. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nepgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.