42 U.S.C. § 7612 — Economic impact analyses

(a) Cost-benefit analysis. The Administrator^*, consulting with the Secretaries of Commerce and Labor and the Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis established under subsection (f), must comprehensively analyze this chapter’s effects on the public health, economy, and environment of the United States. The Administrator should consider the costs, benefits, and other effects of complying with standards for criteria air pollutants under section 7409; hazardous air pollutants listed under section 7412, including technology-based and risk-based standards; mobile-source emissions under subchapter II; limits on sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxide emissions; limits under subchapter VI on producing ozone-depleting substances; and any other section of this chapter.

(b) Benefits. The Administrator must consider all economic, public-health, and environmental benefits of efforts to comply with the standard. If benefits are given numerical values, the Administrator may not assume a value of zero unless specific data supports that assumption. The Administrator must assess how benefits are measured so damage to human health and the environment is measured and considered more accurately.

(c) Costs. The Administrator must consider the standard’s effects on employment, productivity, cost of living, economic growth, and the overall United States economy.

(d) Initial report. Within 12 months after November 15, 1990, the Administrator, consulting with the Secretaries and the Council, must submit to Congress a report summarizing the analysis under subsection (a). The report must state^* all costs incurred before November 15, 1990, to comply with the standards and all benefits that accrued to the United States because of those costs.

(e) Omitted.

(f) Appointment of Advisory Council. Within 6 months after November 15, 1990, the Administrator, consulting with the Secretaries of Commerce and Labor, must appoint an Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis of at least nine members. This section calls it the “Council”. The Administrator must appoint recognized experts in the health and environmental effects of air pollution, economic analysis, environmental sciences, and other fields the Administrator considers appropriate.

(g) Duties. The Council must review data to be used for an analysis under this section and recommend how the Administrator should use it; review the methodology used to analyze the data and recommend how the Administrator should use that methodology; and, before a report required under subsection (d) or (e) is issued, review the report’s findings and recommend to the Administrator whether those findings are valid and useful.