On New Year’s Eve, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced it will be denying a petition brought to the agency by the Landmark Legal Foundation. The petition had requested the DOE reconsider a regulation related to energy efficiency standards for microwave ovens on the grounds that the Energy Department used a new, much higher, estimate of the social cost of carbon (SCC) in the final analysis of the regulation than had been used in the proposed version of the rule. The SCC is a number the Department uses to estimate benefits to society from reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The public was denied the opportunity to comment on the higher estimate of the SCC since the new estimate was not used until after the time the public was allowed to comment on the regulation.
Here’s some of the DOE’s reasoning for denying the petition:
In the microwave oven rule, the SCC analysis did not affect DOE’s decision regarding the standards that were published in the Federal Register at either the proposed rule or final rule stage because the estimated benefits to consumers of the standard exceeded the costs of the standard, even without considering the SCC values. [emphasis added]
However, as I and others have stated before, these “benefits to consumers” are not benefits at all, and should be excluded from consideration when determining whether the DOE’s energy efficiency standards produce benefits in excess of costs. In a comment I wrote to the DOE as the agency considered this petition, I said:
The preponderance of the rule’s benefits, nearly 80 percent, are not related to reductions in carbon emissions, or even to any environmental effects at all. Instead, these benefits are based on the assumption that consumers behave in an irrational manner when purchasing microwave ovens and that the Department will be able to “fix” this behavior by issuing a regulation, thereby resulting in benefits to consumers. These “savings” should be excluded from the agency’s final analysis of benefits resulting from the regulation.
So the DOE is partly right. The new SCC really doesn’t make a difference in this particular case. However, this is because the regulation produces net costs to society with or without the higher estimate of the social cost of carbon. Thus, the rule can’t be justified on a cost-benefit basis even with the new social cost of carbon number the DOE uses. As I explained in my comment:
Given that the primary estimate of the total benefits resulting from this regulation is estimated at $294 million per year (2011$), and total costs are estimated at $66.4 million per year, subtracting the consumer “irrationality” benefits of $234 million produces net costs to society of $6.4 million per year (2011$).12 If DOE used a lower value of the SCC, like the estimate used in the proposed version of this regulation, that net cost figure would be even higher. The problem is further compounded if benefits to other countries are excluded from the estimates.
The DOE made no effort to respond to this particular critique in its response to the Landmark Legal Foundation petition. The agency does not view the questionable nature of its estimated benefits to consumers as within the scope of the issue it sought comment on. Perhaps this is so. However, there will be more such regulations in the future where this controversial technique is employed by the DOE. Indeed, at Mercatus we have already commented on such regulations. Additionally, the agency’s decision to slip this notice out on New Year’s Eve leads one to question the degree to which the agency is committed to transparent practices. As a result, an inefficient regulation will be implemented and Americans will be made worse off.