The Social Costs of Hydrofluorocarbons and the Large Climate Benefits from their Expedited Phasedown
Paper Number: 2023-05
Document Date: 05/2023
Author(s): Tammy Tan, Lisa Rennels, and Bryan Parthum
Subject Area(s): Economic Damages/Benefits, Climate Change, Environmental Policy, Benefit-Cost Analysis, Modeling
Keywords: Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, Climate Policy, Hydrofluorocarbons
Abstract: Hydrofluorocarbons are a potent greenhouse gas, yet there remains a lack of quantitative estimates of their social and economic costs. The present study addresses this gap by directly calculating the social cost of hydrofluorocarbons (SC-HFCs) using perturbations of exogenous inputs to integrated assessment models. We first develop set of direct estimates of the SC-HFCs using methods currently adopted by the United States Government, and then derive updated estimates that incorporate recent advances in climate science and economics. We compare our estimates with commonly used approximations based on global warming potentials to show that using the latter is a poor proxy for direct calculation of hydrofluorocarbon emissions impacts using IAMs. Applying our SC-HFCs to current international agreements, we estimate they provide $37 trillion (2020USD) in climate benefits over the lifetime of the agreement. Expediting the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons could increase the estimated climate benefits to $41 trillion (2020USD).
This paper is part of the Environmental Economics Working Paper Series.