Sponsors (25)
Introduced February 7, 2025 by Jerrold Lewis Nadler · Last progress February 7, 2025
The bill shifts substantial costs onto polluters to fund large, guaranteed climate resilience and mitigation programs that direct significant resources to vulnerable communities and expand legal and regulatory tools — but it also risks higher energy and consumer prices, increased federal spending and administrative complexity, legal uncertainty, and uneven access for smaller jurisdictions.
Low-income, frontline, Tribal, and other vulnerable communities — and state/local governments that serve them — will receive large, predictable new funding because the bill creates a Polluters Pay Climate Fund funded by roughly $100 billion/year to finance adaptation, resilience, and related programs.
Low-income, frontline, and Tribal communities will get prioritized assistance because the bill requires at least 40% of annual Fund investments to flow to those communities, increasing resilience and reducing disproportionate climate harms.
State and local governments and communities nationwide will receive expanded disaster preparedness, response, and resilience resources because the bill guarantees substantial annual allocations (including at least $15 billion to FEMA, $3 billion for BRIC, and $6 billion for EPA grants/technical assistance).
Households and businesses that pay for energy will likely face higher prices because the bill effectively imposes roughly $100 billion/year in assessments on fossil fuel companies that can be passed through to consumers.
All taxpayers could bear higher federal costs or redistributed priorities because the bill requires trillions in new investment over the decade and creates large mandatory spending streams, potentially raising taxes, borrowing, or forcing cuts elsewhere.
Fossil fuel companies, their workers, and local economies tied to them will face increased litigation, regulatory, and compliance risk, creating legal uncertainty and potential local economic harm as costs are absorbed or relocated.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Creates a new tax-linked Treasury trust fund to finance climate resilience, disaster response, and environmental justice, and preserves legal and state authority.
Creates a new federal trust fund to pay for climate resilience, adaptation, disaster response, and environmental justice projects, and links that fund to a new tax on the current stock of greenhouse gas emissions tied to fossil-fuel producers. The measure adds a new chapter to the Internal Revenue Code, establishes a Treasury-managed Polluters Pay Climate Fund to receive transfers equivalent to taxes collected, requires minimum annual transfers to FEMA and other grant programs, and directs at least 40% of annual fund appropriations to benefit environmental justice communities. The law also protects existing private and public legal claims related to fossil fuels and climate harms (making clear the fund does not limit lawsuits), preserves state and local authority over greenhouse gas standards and related programs, and disallows tax deductions for taxes imposed under the new chapter. The statutory findings state an annual assessment target ($100 billion) but the tax and effective-rate details are not set in the code sections added by this text; actual spending depends on future appropriation acts and tax implementation rules by Treasury and IRS.