Industry-funded research from NERA Economic Consulting estimated<br />that it would increase retail electricity bills by 0.3 percent in the 2020s; the Environmental Protection Agency estimated a 2 to 3 percent increase in 2020 and a decrease by 2030; and Synapse Energy Economics and M. J. Bradley & Associates both projected a significant decrease in electricity costs, as much as 17 percent by 2030.<br />Consider a relatively narrow question involving the economics of climate change mitigation: How much will the Obama administration’s<br />Clean Power Plan, a key element of its efforts, increase the electricity prices that Americans pay?<br />It Depends on How We Value Time -<br />Get the Upshot in your Inbox<br />President Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris climate accord —<br />and his broader unwillingness to fight climate change — will have broad economic consequences.<br />This challenge of projecting the consequences of climate action gets all the harder when you go from a narrow question<br />like the cost of electricity a few years down the road to broader questions about jobs, incomes and G. D.P.<br />And beyond the complexity of modeling how climate policies will affect the economy,<br />and the judgment call of how much value to assign to preserving existing jobs, there is an even bigger question.<br />In pessimistic forecasts of the impact of climate change, the cost to adapt to a warming planet will be eventually be huge, potentially including vast expenditures to try to protect cities from rising seas, adjusting agriculture to new climate patterns,<br />and countless other changes to business and the economy
