By Kevin D. Dayaratna, PhD

Testimony before Committee on Natural Resources, United States House of Representatives, July 23, 2015

Chairman Bishop and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify about the social cost of carbon. My name is Kevin Dayaratna. I am the Senior Statistician and Research Programmer at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.

It seems to be a fundamental goal of the Obama Administration to expand regulations across the energy sector of the economy. One of the primary metrics that the Administration has used to justify these regulations is the social cost of carbon (SCC), which is defined as the economic damages associated with a metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions summed across a particular time horizon.