U.S. Senate: Carbon Scoring Act of 2024 Introduced

On September 12th, legislation denominated the Carbon Scoring Act of 2024 (“Act”) was introduced in the United States Senate.

Senators sponsoring the bill include:

• Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island).
• Senator Chris Van Hollen (Maryland).
• Senator Peter Welch (Vermont).
• Senator Alex Padilla (California).
• Senator Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts).
• Senator Martin Heinrich (New Mexico).
• Senator Brian Schatz (Hawaii).
• Senator Ed Markey (Massachusetts).

The Act would mandate that the Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) provide the United States Congress certain information on the emissions effects of proposed legislation.

Senator Whitehouse in a press release regarding the Act noted in part:

…Congress needs better tools to accurately assess the emissions effects of proposed policies. CBO has long been an independent partner to Congress on budget scoring, and is a natural fit for providing Congress with transparent carbon scoring that can be trusted by members on both sides of the aisle.

The Act requires that CBO develop and refine models that can estimate the emission effects of Congressional climate policy.

The Act further requires CBO to:

• Model the most potent greenhouse gas emissions.
• Provide a carbon score that would include an estimate of legislation’s effect on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions through the 10-year budget window.
• Estimate the climate-related costs or savings of proposed legislation.
• Commentary on how a policy influences emissions in the years past the 10-year window.
• Estimation of how a policy would change global emissions levels.

The effect of proposed legislation to be addressed by CBO in terms of emissions estimates would apply to bills requested by the Chair of the Senate or U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committees and any bills reported out of committee if they affect any modeled year’s outlays or revenues by at least $500 million and contain at least one emissions-related provision, including:

• Changes to taxes or tax credits on fuels, power, or emissions;
• Assignments of a dollar value to emissions or products that emit greenhouse gasses; or
• The creation of a standard or cap on emissions or products that emit greenhouse gasses.

A copy of the Act can be downloaded here.