Climate & Sustainability: Climate policy

CRA is widely-recognized for making fundamental contributions to economic analysis and research on climate policy and related issues. These contributions include analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of different mechanisms available for reducing greenhouse gases (cap and trade, carbon tax, safety valve, etc.) and trade implications associated with different climate change policies.

We work with companies across a range of industries to address the uncertainty surrounding global, national, and regional climate policy. This uncertainty has presented companies with significant new risks, and potentially new opportunities. Accurately identifying them requires a keen understanding of possible climate-policy outcomes. CRA has this understanding, and we are using it to help our clients adjust their businesses to succeed in the new policy regime.

Our consultants combine CRA’s renowned economic and technical expertise to advise companies on how prospective greenhouse gas regulatory outcomes can be integrated into corporate strategies to protect future business prospects.

CRA combines a state-of-art macroeconomic model with a detailed model of the electric sector to form a toolset that is unrivaled in the industry. It enables us to evaluate impacts of climate policy at the macro level, such as changes in GDP, or at the micro level, such as changes in the dispatch of individual electric generating units. The resulting big-picture view provides clients detailed knowledge of the impacts new policy is likely to have on their business operations.

We also provide detailed economic modeling of legislative proposals for economy-wide and electric sector climate policies. These models identify macroeconomic impacts, including changes in GDP, employment, and consumption and investment, while also providing projections of CO₂ allowance prices and changes in fuel consumption and electricity demand.  In addition, we identify possible “winners” and “losers” that may result from different climate policies.