This bill mandates a comprehensive economic study, led by NOAA, to quantify the financial costs of extreme heat across health, property, and infrastructure sectors.
Mark Kelly
Senator
AZ
The Extreme Heat Economic Study Act of 2025 mandates a comprehensive economic study, led by the head of NOAA, to quantify the financial costs associated with extreme heat events. This study must calculate losses across health, property damage, lost productivity, and infrastructure disruption, including the cost of human life. The resulting report will offer recommendations for a national system to track these heat-related economic impacts and must be published within four years.
New Study Aims to Tally the Bill for Extreme Heat: $3.5 Million Authorized to Calculate Real-World Costs
The newly introduced Extreme Heat Economic Study Act of 2025 is straightforward: it commissions a massive, four-year study to figure out exactly how much extreme heat is costing the country every year. Think of this as the government finally deciding to run a serious accounting of climate change’s most immediate, painful consequence.
The Real-World Cost of Sweating
This isn't just about rising utility bills. The legislation directs the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (that’s NOAA) to lead the effort, focusing on putting a dollar value on losses that hit everyone from farmers to office workers. The study must dig into several specific areas, essentially creating an economic map of heat impact.
For instance, the study will track health costs, requiring collaboration with state health departments to standardize how we value human life and health when heat waves hit. This means looking beyond just the immediate death toll and calculating the costs of ER visits, hospital stays, and prescriptions related to heat exposure. If you’ve ever had to rush a family member to urgent care during a summer scorcher, this provision is about quantifying that financial hit.
It also tackles lost productivity. This is the part that hits the economy directly: how much money is lost when construction crews have to stop working at 11 AM, when warehouse workers slow down, or when office workers can’t focus because the power grid is struggling. The bill specifically requires analyzing lost work time and insurance claims related to business shutdowns caused by heat-related power disruptions. For a small business owner relying on summer revenue, this data could finally show the true cost of those unpredictable outages.
Following the Money Trail
The study must also quantify losses related to property damage (though the bill gives NOAA some wiggle room here, saying they only have to evaluate it “as much as they practically can”), infrastructure disruption (like damage to roads, power grids, and water systems), and agricultural losses (using insurance claims data for crops and livestock). If you’re a taxpayer, the bill authorizes $3.5 million to conduct this analysis, which is the cost of getting the hard data needed to justify future spending on things like grid upgrades or cooling centers.
Crucially, the final report—due four years after the bill passes—must include recommendations for setting up a permanent national system to track heat-related healthcare costs publicly. Right now, data is fragmented. This study aims to create a central dashboard (likely on the existing HEAT.gov website) so policymakers and the public can see, in real-time, how much heat is costing us in medical bills and lost work. This shift from anecdotal evidence to hard, standardized numbers is the biggest win of the Act, providing the necessary facts to drive better preparedness and public health response.