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What Social Cost of Carbon? A mapping of the Climate Debate

Author

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  • Perrissin Fabert, Baptiste
  • Dumas, Patrice
  • Hourcade, Jean-Charles

Abstract

Given disparate beliefs about economic growth, technical change and damage caused by climate change, this paper starts with the seeming impossibility of determining a unique time profile of the social costs of carbon as a benchmark for climate negotiations and for infrastructure decisions that need to be made now in the absence of an inclusive international accord on climate policies. The paper demonstrates that determining a workable range of the social costs of carbon is however possible in a sequential decision-making framework that permits revising initial decisions in the light of new information. To do so, the paper exploits the results of a stochastic optimal control model run for more than 2000 scenarios that represent the set of beliefs presented about key uncertain parameters in the literature. The paper provides a heuristic mapping of the climate debate in the form of six “clubs of opinions” and shows the possibility of determining a range of social costs of carbon that might permit a compromise between the maximum range of “clubs” and those most likely to emerge in the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Perrissin Fabert, Baptiste & Dumas, Patrice & Hourcade, Jean-Charles, 2012. "What Social Cost of Carbon? A mapping of the Climate Debate," Climate Change and Sustainable Development 128201, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:feemcl:128201
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.128201
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    Cited by:

    1. Lecuyer, Oskar & Quirion, Philippe, 2013. "Can uncertainty justify overlapping policy instruments to mitigate emissions?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 177-191.
    2. Etienne Espagne & Baptiste Perrissin Fabert & Antonin Pottier & Franck Nadaud & Patrice Dumas, 2012. "Disentangling the Stern/Nordhaus Controversy: Beyond the Discounting Clash," Working Papers 2012.61, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    3. Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Janda, Karel & Zilberman, David, 2015. "Selective reporting and the social cost of carbon," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 394-406.
    4. Baptiste Perrissin Fabert & Etienne Espagne & Antonin Pottier & Patrice Dumas, 2012. "The “Doomsday” Effect in Climate Policies. Why is the Present Decade so Crucial to Tackling the Climate Challenge?," Working Papers 2012.62, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    5. 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.
    6. Sascha Samadi, 2017. "The Social Costs of Electricity Generation—Categorising Different Types of Costs and Evaluating Their Respective Relevance," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-37, March.
    7. Richard S. J. Tol, 2021. "Estimates of the social cost of carbon have increased over time," Papers 2105.03656, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    8. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental Economics and Policy;

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q21 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

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