Climate Change

CBO maintains a benchmark projection of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to estimate the effects of certain emissions policies. According to that projection, GHG emissions in the United States decline by about 8 percent from 2025 to 2034.

CBO provides information about the amount of damage that could be reduced through spending for flood adaptations—projects aimed at preventing damage from flooding.

CBO analyzes recent changes in property insurance markets and considers alternative insurance products as well as policy approaches to increase the availability and affordability of insurance for homeowners and renters.

CBO examines how the share of properties at risk of flooding that are covered by policies purchased through the National Flood Insurance Program varies across communities with different economic and demographic characteristics.

CBO provides an overview of greenhouse gas emissions in the manufacturing sector, presents projections of future emissions, and explains how uncertainty about economic conditions, fuel prices, and technology affects those projections.

CBO examines the status, federal support, and future potential of carbon capture and storage—a process that removes carbon dioxide from the emissions of power plants and industrial facilities and stores it permanently underground.

CBO estimates the flood damage homes with federally backed mortgages are expected to face in multiyear periods centered on 2020 and 2050, reflecting the effects of climate change. The agency also analyzes where that damage is concentrated.

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

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 describes its recent update of parameters that characterize the relationship between emissions of carbon dioxide and changes in the price of those emissions.

This paper describes CBO’s method for measuring the distributional effects of a tax on carbon emissions and the agency’s rationale for choosing that method, while also comparing it with CBO’s prior method and methods used by other researchers.

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.