Sponsors (2)
The bill makes a modest federal investment to improve ozone monitoring, modeling, and research—strengthening public-health information, environmental projections, and potential agricultural protections—while imposing limited federal costs and creating a risk of future regulatory compliance costs for some businesses.
Communities and policymakers (especially in rural areas) gain improved monitoring and public access to local ozone and heat‑stress data, enabling better-informed health warnings, local responses, and policymaking.
Scientists and state planners get more accurate climate and air-quality projections because the bill funds updating climate models to include ozone radiative forcing, improving long-term planning and risk assessment.
Farmers and agricultural regions benefit from targeted research on ozone impacts to crops and forests, which could inform mitigation practices that reduce crop loss and protect regional agricultural productivity.
Some small businesses and emitters could face future compliance costs if the bill's research leads to policy recommendations that prompt regulatory controls on ozone precursors.
Federal and state agencies may incur additional logistical and coordination costs to deploy and integrate expanded monitoring infrastructure (ozonesondes, aircraft, ground networks) beyond the grant amounts.
Taxpayers finance the program's direct federal spending—about $31.5M across FY2027–FY2029 plus roughly $1M in FY2030 for administration and reporting.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs EPA to create a competitive grant program and expand monitoring and modeling to study tropospheric ozone's climate, air-quality, and ecosystem impacts.
Official title: Require the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a tropospheric ozone research program, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 19, 2026 by Sheldon Whitehouse · Last progress May 19, 2026
Creates a competitive EPA grant program and directs EPA research and monitoring to study how tropospheric ozone and its precursors affect climate, air quality, ecosystems, crops, and heat stress. It requires EPA to expand and integrate monitoring (ground networks, satellites, ozonesondes, aircraft), update models to include ozone radiative forcing and interactions, assess present and future concentration scenarios, and make monitoring data publicly available. Sets a 90-day deadline after appropriations are available for establishing the program and specifies research topics including interactions with other pollutants and climate-driven changes (wildfires, temperature, lightning), regional and seasonal variation, and mitigation approaches.