Climate and Environment

CBO examines the variation in current and future flood risk across communities with different economic and demographic characteristics.

To enhance its work for the Congress, CBO is looking for new research that illuminates the effects of federal regulations on energy markets and CO₂ emissions, and the effects of federal spending on efforts to adapt to climate change.

CBO describes recent trends in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the electric power sector, changes in how electric power is produced and the reasons for those changes, and expectations for future CO₂ emissions in that sector.

CBO provides an overview of emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂, the most common greenhouse gas) in the transportation sector, describing the sources of and trends in such emissions and projecting their future path.

CBO describes how imposing a charge for methane emissions generally affects emissions, companies’ costs, and natural gas prices and discusses how the agency analyzes such a charge.

CBO analyzes trends in wildfire activity; considers the effects of wildfires on the federal budget, the environment, people’s health, and the economy; and reviews forest-management practices meant to reduce fire-related disasters.

CBO outlines the main channels by which climate change and policies intended to mitigate or adapt to it affect the federal budget. Climate change increases budget deficits; investments in mitigation or adaptation could reduce those costs.

This paper describes how CBO constructed its projection of the effect of climate change on U.S. output, how the projected effect should be interpreted, limitations of the analysis, and the central climate-change scenario that CBO used.

Expected annual economic losses from most types of damage caused by hurricane winds and storm-related flooding total $54 billion—$34 billion in losses to households, $9 billion to commercial businesses, and $12 billion to the public sector.

CBO finds that premiums collected by the National Flood Insurance Program for policies in effect in August 2016 fell short of the program’s expected costs by $1.4 billion, mainly because of shortfalls in coastal counties.

In fiscal year 2015, the federal government supported the development, production, and use of fuels and energy technologies through tax preferences totaling $15.8 billion and spending by the Department of Energy totaling $5.4 billion.