Climate & Sustainability: Economic valuation and damages measurement

Environmental claims can be made for alleged harm to human health, economic profitability, property value, habitat value, recreational and use values, or environmental aesthetics. CRA has considerable experience translating these claims into the objective, quantitative, monetary metrics that courts and regulators demand in order to determine appropriate awards for damages.

Our experts provide conceptually sound, defensible measures of the value of remedial actions. These techniques include a careful valuation of the actual damages incurred, or the changes to processes or remediation efforts that may be taken. They also include evaluation of “real options” that may represent valid actions taken by the party to achieve a superior compliance outcome, even if this activity is not conventionally measured with standard financial analytic techniques.

We are skilled in identifying and critiquing the benefit (BEN) model used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration and have successfully challenged values initially generated by this model.

CRA applies a multidisciplinary approach to its analyses, including use of the following well-established techniques for assessing environmental liability:

• Statistics and econometrics
• Epidemiology and health effects
• Property value determination
• Hedonic pricing techniques
• Contingent valuation and surveys
• Financial analysis
• Cost-benefit analysis