Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

13. Environmental Protection Agency · Major · Day one

Eliminate the social cost of carbon and RCP 8.5 as regulatory inputs

Partially done

436 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“Eliminate the use of unauthorized regulatory inputs like the social cost of carbon, black box and proprietary models, and unrealistic climate scenarios, including those based on Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    OSTP, for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, proposed an amendment to the Fifth National Climate Assessment governing the federal use of results that depend on RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5 and similar high-emissions pathways — the first federal instrument aimed at the RCP 8.5 half of the ask, still at comment stage.

  2. Partially done

    EPA announced it was revisiting the social cost of carbon under EO 14154, one of the 31 deregulatory actions announced that day; no guidance document eliminating it was found on the Federal Register or epa.gov.

  3. Partially done

    Executive Order 14154 §6 disbanded the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, withdrew its estimates and technical support documents, told agencies to fall back on OMB Circular A-4 (2003), and gave EPA 60 days to issue guidance on eliminating the social cost of carbon from permitting and regulatory decisions. The Biden-era inputs were withdrawn on Day One; the elimination guidance was still to come.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Whether EPA ever issued the 60-day guidance EO 14154 §6(e) required could not be established: Federal Register full-text searches for “social cost of carbon” and “social cost of greenhouse gases” since 2025-01-20 return only the EO and rules that mention the term, and the Federal Register full-text pages for EPA’s 2025–2026 repeal rules 302 automated fetches, so how those rules’ regulatory impact analyzes treat climate benefits was not read. A human check of the RIAs (e.g. the June 2025 power-plant repeal proposal, docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124) would settle whether done is warranted.
  • EO 14303 Restoring Gold Standard Science (2025-05-23) speaks to models and scenarios generally but does not name RCP 8.5; not used as Evidence.
Action
eliminate
Object
social cost of carbon and RCP 8.5 climate scenarios as regulatory inputs
ID
1158