Sponsors (4)
The bill trades clearer recordkeeping and some regulatory predictability (and potential lower near‑term compliance costs for industry) against weakening or complicating federal use of social‑cost metrics—raising the risk of fewer emissions‑reducing rules, greater long‑term climate harms, legal uncertainty, and administrative burdens.
Utilities, energy companies, and state/local governments will have clearer, more predictable federal definitions and technical guidance for valuing greenhouse‑gas damages, reducing regulatory uncertainty around acceptable damage estimates.
Regulated firms (energy producers, utilities, and some small businesses) may face lower near‑term compliance costs because agencies are restricted from using monetized social‑cost estimates to justify stricter standards.
Taxpayers and federal employees will gain more transparency because agencies must disclose where and how they quantified greenhouse‑gas costs, improving public and congressional oversight of regulatory economic assumptions.
All Americans (urban and rural communities, property owners, and taxpayers) risk higher long‑term climate damages—worse health outcomes, more extreme weather losses, and greater infrastructure impacts—if the bill weakens agencies' ability to quantify and justify emissions‑reducing regulations.
Federal agencies, state governments, and regulated parties could face increased legal uncertainty and inconsistency because ambiguous language about which estimates to use (or prohibitions on metrics) invites litigation and uneven agency practices.
Middle‑class families, taxpayers, and energy consumers could see higher energy prices if mandated social‑cost definitions force utilities and producers into more costly compliance paths (or if regulatory focus shifts to long‑term monetized harms without near‑term cost balancing).
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Bars federal agencies from using monetized "social cost" greenhouse‑gas metrics in analyses, rulemakings, guidance, or other agency actions, and requires agencies to report past uses to Congress.
Official title: To prohibit Federal agencies from considering, in taking any action, the social cost of carbon, the social cost of methane, the social cost of nitrous oxide, or the social cost of any other greenhouse gas, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 1, 2025 by Richard Hudson · Last progress May 1, 2025
Prohibits federal agencies from using monetized "social cost" metrics for greenhouse gases (including social cost of carbon, methane, nitrous oxide, or social cost of greenhouse gases) in rulemakings, guidance, cost‑benefit analyses, or any agency action. It also requires agency heads to report to four congressional committees within 120 days on agency uses of those metrics in proposed and final rules, guidance, and actions dating back to January 2009. Defines the covered metrics by listing specific Interagency Working Group and EPA technical documents and any successor or substantially related estimates, and applies the prohibition across any statutory or executive‑order analytic process that would otherwise consider such metrics.