Putting a Carbon Charge on Federal Coal: Legal and Economic Issues

Krupnick, Alan; Darmstadter, Joel; Richardson, Nathan; McLaughlin, Kyle

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2622710

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Despite their sizeable contribution to the US's emissions profile, there is little research on future emissions stemming from federal lands fuel production. Estimating these future trends is critical for developing domestic climate and energy policy, particularly because federal lands production can be regulated directly by the Department of the Interior without Congressional approval (Leshy 2019;Pleune et al 2020;Krupnick et al 2016).…”

Section: ___________mentioning

confidence: 99%

Emissions from Fossil Fuels Produced on US Federal Lands Present Opportunities for Climate Mitigation

Ratledge¹,

Zachary²,

Huntley³

2021

Preprint

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Between 2005 and 2019 emissions from fossil fuels produced on federal lands and waters accounted for nearly a quarter of annual US energy emissions, roughly 1,400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Despite their magnitude, emissions stemming from federal lands energy production have not historically featured in US climate policy. To better understand their future role in the US’s emissions profile, we model coal, oil and natural gas production on federal lands and waters to 2030, and then calculate associated lifecycle climate emissions. We estimate that total emissions from fossil fuels produced on federal lands and waters decline 28% below 2010 levels by 2030, which falls well short of the 45% global reduction target needed to be consistent with avoiding a 1.5°C temperature rise. The Biden-Harris administration will likely need to pursue a suite of actions if they hope to bring federal emissions in line with ambitious climate targets. Several options, including a carbon adder on royalties for new federal leases, can be quickly enacted without Congressional approval.

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Section: ___________mentioning

confidence: 99%

Emissions from Fossil Fuels Produced on US Federal Lands Present Opportunities for Climate Mitigation

Ratledge¹,

Zachary²,

Huntley³

2021

Preprint

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“…3 This section provides a brief overview of coal production and the federal coal program. For more detail, see the summary in U.S. DOI Office of the Inspector General (2013) and in Krupnick et al (2015). 4 Total production in 2013 was 984.8 million short tons and in 2014 was 999.7 million short tons (U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) (2016a), Short Term Energy Outlook, February 2016, Table 6).…”

Section: The Federal Coal Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bushnell et al (2015) look at interactions between rate and mass plans under the proposed CPP; the analysis here considers either rate-or mass-based implementation, using the final CPP rule, and introduces upstream regulation. The literature on the federal coal program is small; notable contributions are Krupnick et al (2015), who examine the legal framework for a carbon adder on federal coal, and Hein and Howard (2015), who consider both fair return and climate concerns about the federal coal program. In this literature, the paper most closely related to ours is Haggerty, Lawson, and Pearcy (2015), who use a partial equilibrium model of the coal market to estimate the effect on coal revenues and prices of changing the method for computing coal revenues to be gross of transport costs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Federal Coal Program Reform, the Clean Power Plan, and the Interaction of Upstream and Downstream Climate Policies

Gerarden¹,

Reeder²,

Stock³

2016

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We thank Matt Kotchen and Marty Weitzman for helpful discussions. This research was funded in part by Vulcan Philanthropy. Todd Gerarden acknowledges support from U.S. EPA STAR Fellowship Assistance Agreement no. FP-91769401-0. This paper has not been reviewed by the EPA and the views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w22214.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

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“…How much carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is emitted from a power plant? The answer to this question is important to carbon trading programs (Liu 2017), corporate emission reporting (Talbot and Boiral 2013), geographic emission inventories (Hogue et al 2016), and, potentially, the design and implementation of carbon taxes (Krupnick et al 2016). The answer is also less certain than might be imagined or desired, which highlights the need to improve existing emission measurement, reporting, and verification methods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic error and uncertain carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants

Quick

Marland

2019

Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association

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Carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions from U.S. power plants are independently reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Clean Air Markets Division (CAMD) within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Differences between the CAMD and EIA emission tallies show that the amount of CO 2 produced by an individual power plant is less certain than might be imagined or desired. These differences are attributed to systematic error and random measurement error. Random error cannot be retroactively corrected, whereas systematic error can be corrected where relevant data are available. Accordingly, this study identified and, where possible, corrected systematic error affecting the CAMD and EIA CO 2 emission tallies for 1065 power plants that emitted more than 25,000 tons of CO 2 during 2013. The EIA tallies were corrected by accounting for emission factor error, acid-gas sorbent consumption, and combustion of biogenic fuel. The CAMD tallies were likewise corrected by accounting for unreported unit emissions. It was not possible to objectively correct systematic error affecting about 11% of the power plants, and subjective corrections were not attempted. At these plants, the CAMD and EIA emission tallies sometimes differed by more than 20% due to missing unit error, plant identification error, temporal measurement error, or inferred reporting error. Comparisons of the CAMD and EIA emission tallies before and after correction for systematic error show the effectiveness of these corrections. The comparisons also show the persistence of random measurement error. Implications: Understanding the uncertainty of CO2 emission tallies for USA power plants might inform emission inventories, atmospheric flow models or inversions, and emission reduction policies. Knowing the cause and size of measurement errors that contribute to this uncertainty might also help to identify ways to improve the measurement methods and reporting protocols that these CO2 emission tallies are based on.

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Putting a Carbon Charge on Federal Coal: Legal and Economic Issues

Cited by 10 publications

References 25 publications

Emissions from Fossil Fuels Produced on US Federal Lands Present Opportunities for Climate Mitigation

Emissions from Fossil Fuels Produced on US Federal Lands Present Opportunities for Climate Mitigation

Federal Coal Program Reform, the Clean Power Plan, and the Interaction of Upstream and Downstream Climate Policies

Systematic error and uncertain carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants

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