White House directs agencies to consider climate costs in purchases, budgets

The White House is directing agencies to account for climate costs in purchasing decisions and budget proposals.

The White House said in a Thursday fact sheet that agencies should weigh the costs of potential climate damages as they make purchases and put together budget proposals.

A source briefed on the directive told The Hill that they expect it to also expand the use of climate accounting in environmental reviews for infrastructure projects.

“It’s a way to balance climate effects against other economic effects,” said Max Sarinksy, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law.

For example, he said, the “social cost of carbon offers even stronger support for the purchase of electric vehicles because you would add the climate cost savings to the budgetary cost savings.”

The White House’s decision specifically directs agencies to use what are known as the social costs of greenhouse gasses — which quantify in a dollar amount the climate costs of an action —  to make these decisions. These costs are already used in some federal decisions like rulemaking. 

The White House fact sheet said that using such climate accounting would enable “ better comparisons to other costs and benefits of agency decisions that may also be presented in dollar figures.”

It also pointed to a recent federal finding that climate-related disasters could increase federal spending by more than $100 billion annually and decrease annual federal revenue by up to $2 trillion by the end of the century. 

The move received pushback from Republicans, who say that it could ultimately raise costs and hamper infrastructure buildout. 

“The Biden administration continues to use unproven figures to attempt to justify its environmental policies that drive up costs for families, hamstring American employers, and delay job-creating infrastructure projects from ever moving forward,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) in a written statement.