EPA Model for Measuring Rule Benefits May Inspire Other Agencies

The EPA’s bid to shift the way it calculates regulatory costs and benefits could spread to other agencies, and any such efforts would help the Trump administration fulfill its agenda to roll back rules, analysts say.

Limiting the positives of a rule by discounting its “co-benefits"—as the Environmental Protection Agency proposed last month with its mercury emissions regulation—allows agencies to tweak their regulations in ways that are friendlier to those covered by them.

Co-benefits are the added, indirect advantages brought on by a regulation.

“If people at EPA find it appealing, people at other agencies might find it appealing as ...