Changes

The committee also separately derived a range of values for damages from climate change, and found that each ton of CO2 emissions will be far worse in 2030 than now: “even if the total amount of annual emissions remains steady, the damages caused by each ton would increase 50 percent to 80 percent.”

According to the National Research Council report, in 2005 the total annual external damages from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter created by burning coal at 406 coal-fired power plants (which produce 95 percent of the nation's coal-generated electricity), were about $62 billion. A relatively small number of plants -- 10 percent of the total number -- accounted for 43 percent of the damages. Further, coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., emitting on average about a ton of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced, creating climate-related monetary damages range from 0.1 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, based on modeling studies.