Today the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published notice of its request for comment on the Technical Support Document (TSD) for the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). While OMB is seeking input on “all aspects of the TSD and its use of integrated assessment models (IAMs) to estimate SCC values to support agency regulatory impact analyses,” OMB is particularly interested in comments on the following:
- The selection of the three IAMs for use in the analysis and the synthesis of the resulting SCC estimates, as outlined in the 2010 TSD the model inputs used to develop the SCC estimates, including economic growth, emissions trajectories, climate sensitivity and intergenerational discounting;
- How the distribution of SCC estimates should be represented in regulatory impact analyses; and
- The strengths and limitations of the overall approach.
OMB also specified that it is not requesting comments on the three peer reviewed IAMs themselves. Instead, OMB is seeking comments on the use of these IAMs in developing the SCC estimates. Comments must be received by OMB by January 27, 2014.
