Congressional Budget Office
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CBO: Clean energy standards are an affordable way to cut emissions
The Congressional Budget Office found that shifting to cleaner electricity generation is an affordable and effective way to reduce carbon emissions.
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Nicholas Stern: Congressional budget analysis of climate threat is ‘ludicrous’
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. This is the third in a three-part interview with economist Lord Nicholas Stern on climate policy. Watch the first part, in which he argued that failure to address global warming could eventually lead to World War III; and the second part, in which he discusses how action will lead to […]
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Lessons from Senate climate fail
Here are some lessons learned from the perspective of someone who spent the last few years trying to push a real bill through the real Congress.
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Ethanol gets skewered by recent CBO assessment
In its calm and measured way, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just delivered a blistering assessment of the environmental value of corn-based ethanol. The CBO had been charged by Congress to calculate just what the public is getting for its investment in ethanol production: specifically, the $0.45/gallon tax credit that gasoline blenders get for mixing […]
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A chat with energy analyst Trevor Houser about how to assess climate legislation
Trevor HouserPhoto: Peterson Institute for International EconomicsTrevor Houser is a green energy wonk’s green energy wonk. In the last few years, he has produced, among other things, congressional testimony on greening the stimulus bill, an astute take on the market failures around energy efficiency in buildings (PDF), and a comprehensive assessment (PDF) of the Copenhagen […]
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CBO stumbles into the green jobs debate
Cross-posted from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. On May 5, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an issue brief titled “How Policies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Affect Employment” [PDF]. With unemployment hovering stubbornly around 10 percent, the report could shape the Senate’s appetite for taking up the energy and climate change bill […]
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Rebutting CBO's climate policy and jobs paper
The Congressional Budget Office issued a briefing paper yesterday concluding that climate pricing will slightly reduce employment overall in the United States, because green jobs gains won’t quite offset other job losses. Unfortunately, this paper will likely be misquoted and misunderstood repeatedly. It’s not what it seems.
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Perpetuating the myth that climate policy is all cost
A portfolio approach to climate change — a price on carbon coupled with a suite of complementary policies — can serve as a net economic boost. Put more simply: tackling climate change can help the economy. As I lamented yesterday, however, this fact tends to be obscured by the political establishment’s excess focus on carbon […]
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The ‘energy-only’ bill and Byron Dorgan’s deficit hypocrisy
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) is fiscally responsible, a “deficit hawk” as they say in the biz, and like most people who self-identify with that label in Washington, he’s very keen for everyone to know it. Back in September 2009, he urged President Obama to focus on reducing the deficit — indeed, said it should be […]