Sponsor
Tammy Baldwin
Senator · D-WI
Senator · D-WI
The bill centralizes federal climate and extreme‑weather data and coordination to improve resilience and planning, but it raises costs and implementation challenges that could unevenly burden homeowners, local governments, and high‑risk property markets.
State and local governments, building-code bodies, and standards developers get a single, coordinated federal source of forward‑looking climate and extreme‑weather data and improved interagency research coordination, making code updates and cross-jurisdictional consistency easier and reducing duplicated effort.
Homeowners and renters can experience safer, more resilient buildings as modelled future extreme‑weather projections are incorporated into codes and standards.
Private‑sector planners, insurers, infrastructure investors, and the public gain access to standardized long‑term meteorological datasets that improve risk assessment and investment and insurance decision‑making.
Homeowners, developers, small businesses, and local governments may face higher construction and retrofitting costs as codes and standards incorporate forward‑looking climate data.
Homeowners and property markets in high‑risk areas and insurance companies could be disadvantaged by higher perceived risk and rising insurance costs if federal projections effectively become mandatory in practice.
Smaller jurisdictions, rural communities, and under‑resourced local building departments may lack the capacity or funding to implement new data‑driven codes, producing uneven resilience improvements across places.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs NOAA and NIST to produce and publish a single federal forward‑looking long‑term meteorological dataset and to support standards and model‑code developers in using it.
Official title: Require the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere to identify a consistent, Federal set of best available forward-looking meteorological information and to require the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to convene an effort to make such set available, with advice and technical assistance, to standards-developing organizations, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 29, 2026 by Tammy Baldwin · Last progress April 29, 2026
Requires NOAA and NIST to produce and publish a single, consistent federal set of forward‑looking long‑term meteorological information (including modeled future extreme weather, environmental trends, projections, and updated observations) intended for use by building‑code, standards, and voluntary certification developers. Directs OSTP to convene an interagency working group to coordinate research and support, and authorizes NIST to provide technical assistance and make the data available to standards and model‑code organizations through its existing centers and programs.