Readout of the Inaugural Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences’ Roundtable on Macroeconomic and Climate-related Risks and Opportunities

Yesterday, Council of Economic Advisers Member Heather Boushey, Office of Management and Budget Chief Economist Zach Liscow, and other officials from across the Biden-Harris Administration, attended the Inaugural Meeting of the Roundtable on Macroeconomic and Climate-related Risks and Opportunities convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

This Roundtable’s goal is to improve our understanding of how the physical and transition effects of climate change relate to and affect macroeconomic performance, in addition to exploring the implications for fiscal, monetary, and financial stability policies. To that end, in attendance were dozens of scholars focused on the intersection of climate change and macroeconomic modeling.

The United States is in the midst of implementing an unprecedented and ambitious agenda to address climate change, following the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. The President knows that to address the serious challenges science change presents, we must take swift action, which is why he has set an ambitious goal of rapidly transitioning our economy to produce and use clean energy by 2050.

To support this effort, the President’s Executive Order on Climate-Related Financial Risk called on the Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Management and Budget to “identify the primary sources of Federal climate-related financial risk exposure and develop methodologies to quantify climate risk within the economic assumptions and the long-term budget projections of the President’s Budget.” New analytic tools to accurately model the economic effects of climate change will enable policymakers to transition existing productive capabilities into new uses that are consistent with a sustainable, modern economy. To that end, the Council of Economic Advisors and Office of Management and Budget have spearheaded a new Interagency Technical Working Group, delivered an assessment of the Federal government’s capacity, and incorporated an initial estimate of the risks of climate change in the Budget’s Long-Term Outlook.

The launch of the National Academies’ Roundtable on Macroeconomic and Climate-related Risks and Opportunities is critical to these endeavors. The findings from the Roundtable will help realize the President’s vision and inform the Interagency Technical Working Group. The Roundtable will help address core issues, such as how to translate the uncertain impacts of climate change and the transition to net-zero carbon emissions economies into macroeconomic analyses, in addition to exploring how to adjust macroeconomic models and analytic approaches to accommodate the unique characteristics of climate risks and opportunities.

Biden Administration ex-officio members of the panel include:

Heather Boushey, Council of Economic Advisers
Carla Frisch, U.S. Department of Energy
Justina W. Gallegos, National Economic Council
Sarah B. Kapnick, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Zachary Liscow, Office of Management and Budget
Kelly Maguire, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Tara M. Sinclair, U.S. Department of Treasury
Maria Uhle, National Science Foundation

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