Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and James Lankford (R-OK) introduced the Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulations Act, a bill to prohibit the federal government from using the flawed social cost of carbon, social cost of methane, social cost of nitrous oxide, or the social cost of any other greenhouse gas metrics in the rulemaking process.
“The social cost of carbon is an arbitrary and inconsistent metric. It is being used to justify the Biden Administration’s radical climate agenda and has already been changed multiple times, causing major changes in the already cumbersome permitting process. The metrics have become a silver bullet for fringe environmentalist groups and their friends in the administration seeking to stop energy development projects and implement overbearing regulations. The Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulation Act bars the federal government from using these analyses so projects are not held hostage by activist bureaucrats in Washington. The legislation also requires a report to Congress on the use of social cost of carbon and its related entities in order to provide additional insight into the rules and regulations promulgated by the Biden administration using these secret, capricious measurements,” said Senator Cramer.
“Oklahomans want clean air, land, and water. But the ‘social cost of carbon’ was created without transparency for the public or the industries it impacts. It has no basis in reality,” said Senator Lankford. “The social cost of carbon has a big impact on every Oklahoma family and their pocketbook since it is used to justify many parts of Democrats’ illegitimate, progressive climate-change scheme that increases the cost of gasoline, electricity, and other goods. The Supreme Court recently determined in West Virginia v. EPA that the EPA may not cap greenhouse gas emissions because Congress did not provide the agency with that authority. In the same way, the social cost of carbon metric is clearly outside the scope of EPA’s regulatory authority, and our bill ensures they stop using it.”
These social cost of greenhouse gas metrics are theoretical measurements to try to put a price or economic impact on emissions. The measurement theories have been used in the federal government to determine the economic impact of potential federal regulations, even though they are unscientific and can result in more burdensome regulations. The Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulations Act would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Interior Department, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of the Treasury, the US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Health and Human Services from using the social cost of carbon, social cost of methane, and social cost of nitrous oxide as rationales for their regulations.
Senators Cramer and Lankford were joined in introducing the bill by Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Hoeven (R-ND), Steve Daines (R-MT), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), John Barrasso (R-WY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS), and Jim Risch (R-ID).