Center For Climate Strategies in Kansas: Good Economic Analysis?

by Bob Weeks on July 29, 2008

As the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group deliberates over the future of the environment in Kansas, we ought to examine the quality of the work product that the Center for Climate Strategies has produced in other states.

The Beacon Hill Institute has performed an analysis of some of the work CCS has performed, and the results are troubling. This press release contains a link to the study document. This study is short at six pages, and I would encourage you to read the entire document.

One of the things CCS does is to claim that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is actually good economic strategy, using cost-benefit analysis. The Beacon Hiss Institute report, however, finds three serious flaws with the methodology CCS used in its Arizona work. Specifically, CCS fails to quantify benefits meaningfully, misinterprets costs to be benefits, and its estimates of costs leave out important factors.

To me, the misinterpretation of costs as being benefits is a common mistake that these studies make. They often point to the jobs that will be created, as though that in itself is a good. But workers need to be paid, and often the source of that pay is not considered.

Related posts:

  1. Consider carefully all costs of gambling in Wichita
  2. Kansas school spending study finds $717 million in potential savings
  3. Solution to Kansas budget crisis offered
  4. Cap-and-trade admitted to be tax
  5. Kansas Climate Change Group Changes
  6. Climate change alarmism in Kansas is expensive
  7. Analysis of Kansas Wind Power Prospects
  8. Kansas Climate Change Mitigation Will Be Costly
  9. Consider carefully all costs of gambling in Wichita
  10. KDHE, Sunflower Electric, Earthjustice, Center for Climate Strategies: different peas in the same pod
Sign up for our email newsletter

Leave a Comment

(You may leave the name, e-mail, and website fields blank.)

Previous post:

Next post: