The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a significant increase in the social cost of carbon emissions. 

Policymakers use the social cost of carbon to calculate economic damages associated with a rise in greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. 

Federal agencies under the Biden administration have been using a value of $51 per metric ton of CO2 – which in itself was a steep climb from the Trump administration’s $1 per metric ton. 

Now the EPA is proposing to go even higher, at $190 per metric ton. Among other effects, raising this cost is likely to raise the prices at the gaspump. 

The EPA floated the new metric before a proposal from the Interagency Working Group, which helps coordinate the federal government’s approach to calculating the metric. 

In the September draft proposal, the agency concluded that the $190 per metric ton would necessarily climb to $410 in 2080 by the year 2080. It also included proposed methane regulations, pegging methane at $1,600 per ton.