The Social Costs of Hydrofluorocarbons and the Large Climate Benefits from their Expedited Phasedown

Hydrofluorocarbons are a potent greenhouse gas, yet there remains a lack of quantitative estimates of their social and economic costs. The present study addresses this gap by directly calculating the social cost of hydrofluorocarbons (SC-HFCs) using perturbations of exogenous inputs to integrated assessment models. We first develop set of direct estimates of the SC-HFCs using methods currently adopted by the United States Government, and then derive updated estimates that incorporate recent advances in climate science and economics. We compare our estimates with commonly used approximations based on global warming potentials to show that using the latter is a poor proxy for direct calculation of hydrofluorocarbon emissions impacts using IAMs. Applying our SC-HFCs to current international agreements, we estimate they provide $37 trillion (2020USD) in climate benefits over the lifetime of the agreement. Expediting the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons could increase the estimated climate benefits to $41 trillion (2020USD).