2015/02/25 by Drew Shindell · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Environmental Science · #Climate Change Policy and Economics #Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics #Economic and Environmental Valuation
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s10584-015-1343-0
openalex publication_date 2015/02/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
I present a multi-impact economic valuation framework called the Social Cost of Atmospheric Release (SCAR) that extends the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) used previously for carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) to a broader range of pollutants and impacts. Values consistently incorporate health impacts of air quality along with climate damages. The latter include damages associated with aerosol-induced hydrologic cycle changes that lead to net climate benefits when reducing cooling aerosols. Evaluating a 1 % reduction in current global emissions, benefits with a high discount rate are greatest for reductions of co-emitted products of incomplete combustion (PIC), followed by sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), nitrogen oxides (NO x ) and then CO 2 , ammonia and methane. With a low discount rate, benefits are greatest for PIC, with CO 2 and SO 2 next, followed by NO x and methane. These results suggest that efforts to mitigate atmosphere-related environmental damages should target a broad set of emissions including CO 2 , methane and aerosol/ozone precursors. Illustrative calculations indicate environmental damages are 330-970 billion yr −1 for current US electricity generation (~14–34¢ per kWh for coal, ~4–18¢ for gas) and 3.80 (−1.80/+2.10) per gallon of gasoline (4.80 (−3.10/+3.50) per gallon for diesel). These results suggest that total atmosphere-related environmental damages plus generation costs are much greater for coal-fired power than other types of electricity generation, and that damages associated with gasoline vehicles substantially exceed those for electric vehicles.