Webcast #4: Discounting the Economic Impacts of Climate Change
Event Details:
Stanford University and EPRI present:
Options for Estimating the Global Economic Impacts of Climate Change and the Social Cost of Carbon Module-by-Module
A public educational webcast series
Please join us for our next webcast
(See below for information about the series and previous webcasts)
Discounting the Economic Impacts of Climate Change
May 16, 2025
12:00-1:30 PM EST / 9:00-10:30 AM PST / 6:00-7:30 PM CET
Moderator: John Weyant (Stanford University), presentation, slides
Expert Panel:
Kerry Krutilla (Indiana University), presentation, slides
Thomas Rutherford (University of Wisconsin), presentation, slides
Steven Rose (EPRI) , presentation, slides
On this webcast, our speakers will discuss options for discounting the future potential global economic impacts of climate change, including discounting approaches for benefit-cost analysis and the approaches proposed with U.S. Government social cost of carbon estimation methodologies. The expert speakers will provide insights into alternatives, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and opportunities. Discounting choices have a significant impact on estimates of the economic impacts of climate change and estimates of the social costs of greenhouse gases and is therefore critical to understand, evaluate, and discuss.
The Stanford-EPRI Public Educational Webcast Series
The Stanford-EPRI public educational webcast series explores options for modeling the global economic impacts of climate change and the social cost of carbon module-by-module, as well as overall. The first webcast in the series was January 11, 2024. See series website and below for details and links to publicly available materials for the previous webcasts in the series.
Federal and state governments, as well as international negotiators and others, are interested in understanding the global economic costs of a changing climate. This information is important for estimating the benefits of limiting global warming to well below 2ᵒC, evaluating macroeconomic climate risks to economies, and estimating the social costs of carbon, methane, and other greenhouse gases (SC-GHGs) to value the climate benefits of policies that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. SC-GHGs are estimates of the discounted future economic cost to society from the climate change caused by emitting one unit of a GHG into the atmosphere.
Recent IPCC reports, as well as new SC-GHG methodology developments, have facilitated and forced assessment of current underlying scientific knowledge and translation of that information into global economic impacts of climate change modeling. With governments and stakeholders needing reliable information to inform decisions with significant national and global ramifications, broad public and scientific engagement, understanding, assessment, and dialogue are essential.
The Stanford-EPRI Educational Webcast Series is designed to improve the state of understanding regarding the science, facilitate scientific and public dialogue on approaches, alternatives, and opportunities, and inform the development of the scientifically reliable estimates needed for robust decisions and public confidence. Estimating the global economic impacts of climate change, however, is technically and scientifically challenging, requiring characterization and projection of potential global economic and physical systems for centuries. Methodologies include some representation of linked modules projecting global socioeconomic and emissions conditions, climate and other earth system responses, economic impacts to future climate change, and discounting to compute the net present value of economic impacts.
This webcast series convenes panels of leading experts on the science related to each of the modules associated with estimation, and overall. Thus, the series deconstructs the overall problem of estimating the global economic impacts of climate change into its modules to allow for tractable and focused disciplinary conversations about the state of knowledge and how best to use it. Each expert panel is asked to share its thoughts on the available science, options, technical issues, and opportunities. The series set of topics includes the following:
- Projecting economies and emissions for estimating the global economic impacts of climate change
- Options for estimating the global economic impacts response to a future climate.
- Modeling global climate change and earth system responses to greenhouse gas emissions
- Discounting the Economic Impacts of Climate Change.
- If not the social cost of carbon, what else or what in addition to it?
- Is module-by-module modeling of the global economic impacts of climate change credible?