Greenhouse Gas Curbs Costly, U.S. Study Finds

In a study ordered by Congress, the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded that reductions in carbon dioxide emissions similar to those adopted by several European countries would cost the nation as much as $95 billion a year, double the price of gasoline and increase the wellhead cost of natural gas by 400%.

The findings, summarizing a massive two-volume study, were released four days before negotiators from around the world convene in Geneva to resume work on a global warming pact scheduled to be signed at a global environmental summit next June.

With the European Community pressing for an agreement to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions at present levels by the end of the decade, the United States is still resisting such firm targets and deadlines.

Energy Secretary James D. Watkins, in a prepared statement released with the findings of the Energy Department study, said that the analysis shows such steps to be premature.

“This study,” he said, “points out the very high costs to our economy of the large carbon dioxide emission reductions some are advocating. Given these high costs, given the uncertain state of our knowledge about how greenhouse gases affect global climate change, and given the limited effect that action by any one nation can have on global greenhouse gas emissions, arbitrary emission reduction targets such as those studied here are clearly unwarranted.”

Most scientists have concluded that the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect is being enhanced, with possibly cataclysmic climate changes, by human activity--particularly carbon dioxide from massive consumption of fossil fuels.

In 1989 Congress ordered the Energy Department to analyze the implications of capping U.S. carbon dioxide emissions at 20% below present levels by the year 2000 and at 50% below present levels by the year 2010.

The report concluded that a $500-per-ton carbon tax would be necessary to reach the 20% reduction through reduction of fossil fuel use. The 50% reduction would not be attained, the study concluded, even with a carbon tax of $750 per ton on carbon emissions.

The findings appeared far more gloomy than those of an earlier study by the National Academy of Sciences, which concluded that substantial reductions in carbon dioxide emissions could be attained with little economic penalty. More recently an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Alliance to Save Energy, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy said that carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by 25% by the year 2005 with economic benefit rather than penalty.

Energy Department officials said their study is not as sharply at odds with the National Academy of Sciences’ report as it appears since the academy analysis had been based on a static economy while the DOE made assumptions of continued economic growth.

Environmentalists took sharp issue with the energy secretary’s conclusion that reduction targets are unwarranted. “He ignores what is on the table in international negotiations,” said Rafe Pomerance of the World Resources Institute. “The message is clear, that we need to start now, using technologies already available and steadily reduce our emissions.”