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CLIMATE POLICY

To achieve deep cuts in US emissions, state-driven policy is only slightly more expensive than nationally uniform policy

Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 911–912 (2021)Cite this article

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Using a multi-sector model of human and natural systems, we find that the nationwide cost from state-varying climate policy in the United States is only one-tenth higher than that of nationally uniform policy. The benefits of state-led action — leadership, experimentation and the practical reality that states implement policy more reliably than the federal government — do not necessarily come with a high economic cost.

Messages for policy

  • Heterogeneous federal approaches to tackle climate change may be more sustainable politically; the extra cost, as compared with idealized uniform policy, may be low.

  • Wealth, economic structure and carbon intensity vary by state; state-led policies can embrace regional differences in interests and capabilities, bringing large political benefits with small extra cost.

  • Efforts to remove barriers for inter-state trade of energy products — electricity and liquid fuels, especially — could help to lower mitigation costs not only for the leading states but also nationally.

  • Investing in critical technologies in harder-to-abate sectors could make it easier for jurisdictions that are lagging behind the leaders to adopt new technologies and policies.

  • Deep emissions cuts hinge on nearly every state making some effort; strategies that elicit at least minimal effort from all while encouraging increased ambition and faster action from leading jurisdictions may be most effective.

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Fig. 1: Cost of state-driven and nationally uniform policy approaches to achieve varying decarbonization targets for the United States.

References

Further reading

  • Iyer, G. et al. Measuring progress from nationally determined contributions to mid-century strategies. Nat. Clim. Change 7, 871–874 (2017). This study utilized the same model (GCAM-USA) to examine the required transition in the energy system for the United States to achieve deep decarbonization by the middle of the century.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peng, W. et al. Climate policy models need to get real about people — here’s how. Nature 594, 174–176 (2021). This commentary provides the broader context of the research agenda for bringing politics into integrated assessment models.

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  • Keohane, R. O. & Victor, D. G. Cooperation and discord in global climate policy. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 570–575 (2016). This paper discussed decentralized policy strategy to tackle climate change, which could lead, incrementally, to deeper cooperation.

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  • Sabel, C. F. & Victor, D. G. Governing global problems under uncertainty: making bottom-up climate policy work. Clim. Change 144, 15–27 (2017). This paper highlights the importance of institutional support for the success of bottom-up climate action.

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  • Bauer, N. et al. Quantification of an efficiency–sovereignty trade-off in climate policy. Nature 588, 261–266 (2020). While we studied non-uniform policy efforts across the US states, this study examined non-uniform efforts across countries using a global-scale integrated assessment model (REMIND–MAgPIE).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

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Acknowledgements

W.P. received a summer research stipend from the Penn State School of International Affairs. G.I., M.B. and J.A.E. received support from the Global Technology Strategy Program. D.G.V. draws funding, in part, from the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit R&D organisation focused on the electric power sector. D.G.V. is also supported partly by donations to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for research on emergency responses to climate change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of International Affairs and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Wei Peng

  2. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD, USA

    Gokul Iyer, Matthew Binsted & James A. Edmonds

  3. School of the Environment, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jennifer Marlon

  4. Center for Global Sustainability, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Leon Clarke

  5. School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    David G. Victor

  6. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    David G. Victor

  7. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    David G. Victor

  8. The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA

    David G. Victor

Authors
  1. Wei Peng
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  2. Gokul Iyer
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  3. Matthew Binsted
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  4. Jennifer Marlon
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  5. Leon Clarke
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  6. James A. Edmonds
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  7. David G. Victor
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wei Peng.

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Competing interests

D.G.V. is a consultant to the shareholder group Engine No. 1. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Peng, W., Iyer, G., Binsted, M. et al. To achieve deep cuts in US emissions, state-driven policy is only slightly more expensive than nationally uniform policy. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 911–912 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01193-5

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