SAB Panel Wrestles With Key Debate On Rule Cost-Benefit ‘Discounting’

In a debate particularly relevant for future climate change rules, EPA advisers are wrestling with how agency guidelines should address discounting future benefits or costs from regulations, including how such guidance might accommodate policy shifts by a future White House. The issue is just one of many topics under evaluation by a Science Advisory Board (SAB) panel assessing draft revisions to EPA’s Guidelines for Economic Analysis, last revised comprehensively in 2010. But the discussion of discounting future costs and benefits...