The Environmental Protection Agency has inflated the benefits of the Clean Power Plan, according to a report issued Thursday by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. “The many flaws of the EPA’s cost-benefit analysis of the CPP do not necessarily mean that the U.S. should not adopt any policies to address climate change. While cost-benefit analysis is a component of evaluating proposed policies—and an important one, at that—it should not be viewed as some sort of policymaking deus ex machina,” the report says.
Among the argued inadequacies of the EPA’s cost-benefit analysis of the regulation, which requires states to develop action plans to meet federally set emissions reduction goals, is that implementation of the rule will have negligible effects on climate change. The rule is estimated to affect global warming by less than 0.01 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. “Without any measurable impact on world climate, the CPP cannot provide any climate-related benefits,” the report says.
The EPA also uses unrealistic assumptions about increases in the rate of technological improvement for coal-fired generating plants under the CPP and understates compliance costs, according to the report.
