Extreme Heat Economic Study Act of 2025

This bill directs NOAA’s Climate Program Office to run a national study to count the true financial costs of extreme heat, including putting a dollar value on loss of life and property. It covers health impacts, property damage, medical visits and medications, insurance and workers’ comp claims, lost work time, business interruptions from brownouts, damage to roads and utilities, higher cooling bills, and losses to crops and livestock. The study will gather input from many federal agencies and other partners, then recommend how to build a national system to track and share these costs and improve reporting of heat-related deaths. The findings must be posted on HEAT.gov within four years and made publicly available; $3.5 million is authorized for this work.

Key points

• Who is affected: Patients and families, workers, businesses, utilities, and farms and ranches, plus public agencies that respond to heat events.
• What changes: A nationwide economic study of heat’s costs, with public reporting and recommendations to track these costs and improve heat-death reporting.
• When: Results must be published within 4 years on HEAT.gov; funding of $3.5 million is authorized to carry it out.