Climate Research

Climate Change and Response of Markets

Through a pilot project, NCEE is evaluating how businesses make investment decisions when comparing the upfront costs of a technology to a stream of future returns to gain insight into what factors could explain why seemingly cost-effective emission or energy-reducing technologies are not adopted absent government intervention. One of the goals of the project is to determine if there are any systematic barriers to technology adoption.

Impact Assessment and Valuation

NCEE collaborated with EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation and the Department of Energy to host a series of workshops in 2010 and 2011 on improving assessment and valuation of climate change impacts and associated economic damages. Since that time, NCEE continues to support occasional assessments of the literature to understand the latest state-of-the-science for quantifying damages in key sectors.

• 2010 and 2011 NCEE and DOE Sponsored Workshops on Modeling Climate Change Impacts and Associated Economic Damages
• "The Relationship between Air Conditioning Adoption and Temperature" by Maximilian Auffhammer

Economic Impacts of Ocean Acidification

Given the very limited literature in this area, NCEE is funding work to estimate global damages from impacts to coral reefs from ocean acidification. Impacts to tourism, fisheries and other ecosystem services are being modeled.

Intergenerational Discounting

In 2012 EPA funded a workshop that convened twelve prominent economists to discuss appropriate methodologies for intergenerational discounting. More information on the workshop.

A summary of the main points raised by the participants and subsequent articles published by them on intergenerational discounting include:

• "How Should Benefits and Costs Be Discounted in an Intergenerational Context? The Views of an Expert Panel." Kenneth Arrow, Maureen Cropper, Christian Gollier, Ben Groom, Geoffrey Heal, Richard Newell, William Nordhaus, Robert Pindyck, William Pizer, Paul Portney, Thomas Sterner, Richard Tol, Martin Weitzman. RFF Discussion Paper. 2012, 12-53
• "How Should Benefits and Costs Be Discounted in an Intergenerational Context?" Maureen L. Cropper. RFF Discussion Paper. 2012, 12-42
• "How Should Benefits and Costs Be Discounted in an Intergenerational Context?" Maureen L. Cropper. Resources. 2013, 183.
• "Determining Benefits and Costs for Future Generations" (PDF, 0.3 MB) Kenneth Arrow, Maureen Cropper, Christian Gollier, Ben Groom, Geoffrey Heal, Richard Newell, William Nordhaus, Robert Pindyck, William Pizer, Paul Portney, Thomas Sterner, Richard Tol, Martin Weitzman. Science 341 (6144): 349-350.

Probabilistic Socio-Economic-Emissions Scenarios

NCEE has supported work by Abt Associates and MIT researchers to develop a set of future scenarios that project future economic activity, population growth, and emissions of greenhouses gases and criteria air pollutants. The databases of scenarios are developed using the Environmental Policy Prediction and Analysis (EPPA) computable general equilibrium model with probability distributions defined over key parameters so that probabilities may be assigned to specific projections. Two databases are available that explicitly consider the potential for non-U.S. GHG abatement policy conditional on no further U.S. action based on a survey of experts.

• EPPA Probabilistic Scenarios Documentation (PDF, 2.3 MB)
• EPPA Probabilistic Scenarios Libraries (available upon request) (Zip File, 40.7 MB)

Additional Information

• A complete list of NCEE working papers
• A complete list of NCEE publications