As long as you factor in the "social costs" of carbon. I bet you didn't know that there is an acronym for that: SCC.According to a new study, "The social cost of carbon: implications for modernizing our electricity system," recently published online by the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, electricity generated by renewable sources can be comparable in cost, or even less expensive than, electricity generated by more traditional sources. By recalculating the penalties that ought to be assessed for carbon dioxide emissions--the so-called social cost of carbon--the researchers conclude that the actual cost of electricity generation is cheaper using renewable resources than using traditional coal plants, for example.
The social cost of carbon, known by its acronym of SCC, is "a monetization of the impact, or the damages, from the carbon dioxide that's been put into the air," says Chris Hope, Ph.D., a reader in policy modeling and a fellow of Clare Hall at the Judge Business School at the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge. Hope coauthored the piece with Laurie T. Johnson, Ph.D., and Starla Yeh, both with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), based in Washington, D.C. Johnson is the chief economist at the NRDC's Climate Center, while Yeh is located in the organization's Center for Market Innovation.
NRDC has long been a hard-left front group...
"If you believe in the polluter pays principle, then the social cost of carbon dioxide is what you would want to charge anybody who emitted a ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," Hope explains. The SCC method has been in existence for some time; the federal government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines, for example, suggest that in calculating such costs, agencies of the federal government should use 'market' discount rates, according to Johnson, who responded to written questions posed by Civil Engineering online. "We disagree with using market rates for intergenerational damages, and therefore [we] re-estimated the SCC using [new] rates."
They didn't like the answer, so they changed the rules.
The OMB rates translate to $52, $33, and $11 (in 2007 dollars) as today's SCC of one metric ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere, according to the report. These numbers are based on discount rates of 2.5, 3, and 5, percent, respectively, which assume a continually improving economy when comparing the value of today's dollars to those of the future. But these percentages are too steep, the authors of the study argue, in part because off the uncertainty of the future of America's economy. According to the study, more reasonable discount rates of 1, 1.5, and 2 percent should be used, and these create SCC charges of $266, $122, and $62 per ton of emitted CO2.
Figures don't lie, but ... I wonder if they factored in rare bird strikes as a social cost?