This bill mandates a comprehensive economic study to quantify the financial costs of extreme heat across health, property, labor, and infrastructure sectors.
Yassamin Ansari
Representative
AZ-3
The Extreme Heat Economic Study Act of 2025 mandates a comprehensive study, led by NOAA, to quantify the full financial costs of extreme heat events in the United States. This study must analyze impacts across health, property damage, labor productivity, and critical infrastructure like energy and agriculture. The final report will recommend a national system for tracking and publicly reporting these economic losses within four years of enactment.
NOAA Study Seeks to Put a $3.5 Million Price Tag on Extreme Heat’s Damage to the US Economy
The Extreme Heat Economic Study Act of 2025 is straightforward: it mandates a massive, four-year study to figure out exactly how much extreme heat is costing the country every year. The Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (that’s NOAA) is tasked with leading this deep dive, collaborating with various federal agencies to quantify the financial hit from heat waves on everything from health to farming. The goal is to move past general concerns and establish hard dollar figures for the economic damage, with $3.5 million authorized to fund the effort. This study is the foundation for building a permanent, national system to track these costs publicly.
The Real Cost of a Heat Wave
This isn't just about higher AC bills; the study is designed to capture costs that hit people in their wallets and their daily lives. For example, they must calculate the dollar value of heat-related illnesses and deaths, including emergency room visits and hospital stays (SEC. 2). Think about a construction worker forced to stop work early due to heat exhaustion—the study will use existing research to quantify that lost worker productivity, which translates directly to lost wages or increased project costs for businesses. This is important because right now, these costs are often hidden or fragmented across different sectors.
Tracking the Domino Effect: From Farm to Grid
The bill requires NOAA to look at the ripple effect of extreme heat across critical sectors. On the energy side, they’ll factor in the higher energy bills businesses and households pay to keep cool, and the costs associated with brownouts or infrastructure strain on the grid. For farmers, the study will analyze crop and livestock insurance claims to quantify the agricultural losses (SEC. 2). If a heat wave causes power outages that shut down a factory or disrupt supply chains, the study must look at business interruption claims to capture that property and business loss. Essentially, they are trying to connect the dots between a high-temperature forecast and the resulting financial damage claims across the economy.
Building the National Heat Ledger
One of the most important outcomes of this study is the requirement to recommend how to set up a permanent, national system to track these costs publicly. This system would specifically focus on tracking medical assistance expenses, improving how heat-related deaths are reported, and measuring lost work time (SEC. 2). This means that four years from now, we could have a public dashboard showing the real-time economic toll of heat, similar to how we track hurricane damage. While the bill is clear that this study is needed, it does grant the Under Secretary the option to hire an outside group, like the National Academies, and notes that the final data might be published in a peer-reviewed journal. While standard practice, this could mean a slight delay in getting the final, raw data into the public’s hands compared to a direct website release.