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A panel of the National Research Council (NRC), part of the US National Academies, has recommended that the US government resume attempts to measure the nation's green gross domestic product, known as ‘green GDP’.

Such a measure includes environmental resources in estimates of economic productivity. But the US Congress is unlikely to authorize any work in the near future, having stopped it five years ago.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) began developing environmental accounting methods in the early 1990s, and in 1994 published its first analysis, of subsoil mineral resources.

That same year, two congressmen from coal-producing states, Harold Rogers (Republican, Kentucky) and Alan Mollohan (Democrat, West Virginia), led a move to stop work on green GDP until the NRC could assess the methods and objectivity of the department's analysis.

The panel, led by Yale economist William Nordhaus, concluded in its report, released last month, that the BEA's work was sound, and that “developing a set of comprehensive non-market economic accounts is a high priority for the nation”.

Rather than fold environmental factors immediately into the core, market-based GDP account, however, it suggests creating a non-market “satellite account”. The panel also calls for a “concerted federal effort” to measure changes in the quantity and quality of environmental assets — data that are sorely lacking.

It would cost about $1.5 million annually to resume research on green GDP, according to the BEA. But bureau director Steven Landefeld says that, even with the NRC's endorsement, “I'm not sure anything will happen quickly on this”. His budget for conventional economic analyses has been lean in recent years, and he estimates that only one person could be assigned to green GDP research part-time if it started up again.

Landefeld says the United States once led in this type of statistical analysis, but has been out of the debate for several years. With the NRC report complete, he says there may be another opportunity for US leadership.

Nordhaus specializes in modelling the economic effects of climate change. The NRC staff behind the green GDP study offered for him to brief the commerce appropriations subcommittee that commissioned the report. So far, though, no one has taken up the offer.