Industry-funded research from NERA Economic Consulting estimated
that it would increase retail electricity bills by 0.3 percent in the 2020s; the Environmental Protection Agency estimated a 2 to 3 percent increase in 2020 and a decrease by 2030; and Synapse Energy Economics and M. J. Bradley & Associates both projected a significant decrease in electricity costs, as much as 17 percent by 2030.
Consider a relatively narrow question involving the economics of climate change mitigation: How much will the Obama administration’s
Clean Power Plan, a key element of its efforts, increase the electricity prices that Americans pay?
It Depends on How We Value Time -
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President Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris climate accord —
and his broader unwillingness to fight climate change — will have broad economic consequences.
This challenge of projecting the consequences of climate action gets all the harder when you go from a narrow question
like the cost of electricity a few years down the road to broader questions about jobs, incomes and G. D.P.
And beyond the complexity of modeling how climate policies will affect the economy,
and the judgment call of how much value to assign to preserving existing jobs, there is an even bigger question.
In pessimistic forecasts of the impact of climate change, the cost to adapt to a warming planet will be eventually be huge, potentially including vast expenditures to try to protect cities from rising seas, adjusting agriculture to new climate patterns,
and countless other changes to business and the economy