Let's talk a bit about how we estimate the greenhouse gas impacts of federal legislation. Cause if we're about to pass a big infrastructure bill that is responsive to the IPCC report, it's important we get our numbers right. Thread:
1/ Here's the short version: we should, but we don't. We calculate the fiscal impact of legislation, but not the climate impact. That's a problem.
2/ And I'm glad my friend @RepJoeNeguse has introduced a bill to fix that, which I was proud to co-sponsor. congress.gov/bill/117th-con…
3/ But in the meantime, you'll often hear folks (including me) talking about the climate impact of our bills. How we do that, and where we slip up is really important if we are going to understand whether what we are about to do is sufficient.
4/ Outside experts reviewed the GHG impact of all our legislation from the @ClimateCrisis report. It was a careful, honest and complete calculation.
5/ Careful & honest because we evaluated not just the impact of every piece of legislation we proposed, but also how they interacted with one another. (For example, the impact of a wind PTC is lower if you also have a CES decarbonizing PTC-displaced power)
6/ Incomplete because we did not have the time or protocols in place to evaluate the benefit of legislation that didn't expressly include a change in energy use, so understated the total impact.
7/ For example, legislation to require standard greenhouse gas disclosure by public companies would undoubtedly lower the cost of capital to clean tech and accelerate deployment but we were unable to calculate that impact.
8/ So now shift to where we are today. We are in a rush to craft the details of our infrastructure package. We have a scientific and moral obligation to make sure it slashes CO2 emissions. And yet we have no existing *independent* entity to do that calculation.
9/ And let's be clear: independence matters. There is a reason we have the non-partisan CBO calculate the fiscal impact of bills. The political temptations to tilt subjective judgments one way or the other are too strong. And (let's be honest) the math is complicated.
10/ An old colleague of mine liked to say "no one would bowl if you didn't keep score". When don't keep score of the climate impact of our proposed legislation, it's hard to prioritize climate-friendly legislation.
11/ And note that this is just as true for positive as negative changes. We calculate how many dollars legislation will cost the federal treasury AND how many dollars of revenue other bills will bring in. We need to do the same with greenhouse gas scoring.
12/ (The only reason that anyone still thinks CCS with enhanced oil recovery is a CO2-reduction measure is because there is no honest scoring... just so you understand the stakes.)
13/ For now, know that our office is pushing very hard for honest, and complete GHG scoring of our infrastructure legislation. Know also that such a protocol does not yet exist, and we're running out of time.
14/ And keep this in mind if you hear anyone claim to know what the GHG impact of that bill is. Unless they can show you their work, show you where the double counts are corrected and show you that they've netted out the dirty stuff... their work is incomplete. /fin
Postscript: there was a small typo in tweet 4, now fixed thanks to a delete and replace. [insert grumbling about how much I'd like an edit function.]
Double post-script. Tweet 4 still has a typo. Should say INcomplete. Grr.
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