Economists: Shale oil 'dividend' could pay for smaller carbon footprint
Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - 15:00
in Earth & Climate
Unanticipated economic benefits from the shale oil and gas boom could help offset the costs of substantially reducing the US's carbon footprint, agricultural economists say. Using an economic model, they found that "spending" part of this dividend on slashing the nation's carbon emissions by about 27 percent -- about the same amount set forth in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's recently proposed Clean Power Plan -- would reduce the shale dividend by about half.