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Focus Areas

Economic Impacts of Climate Change

Understanding the economic costs of climate change helps us minimize the damage of future impacts

Climate change is already impacting the health, well-being, and livelihoods of communities across the globe, and these impacts are expected to grow even under the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets. To develop effective strategies for minimizing these future impacts, it is essential to understand how climate change affects economic activity and growth at local, national, and global scales and what the full societal costs of carbon emissions are.

We offer our clients an integrated and highly skilled team of social and environmental science experts, with demonstrated experience in conducting collaborative analyses of the economic consequences of climate change. Our team of experts is dedicated to fully understanding and effectively communicating how climate change affects different sectors of the economy.

We have applied these skills and dedication to analyze the economic impact of climate change including:

  • Economic damages to residential and commercial properties as result of sea level rise, and the ripple effects of these damages on local and regional economic performance
  • Costs of illness associated with extreme heat events and urban heat island effects
  • Changes in forest sector, crop and livestock yields, and harvest values due to long term changes in temperature and precipitation patterns
  • Decreased economic returns from irrigation investments due to changes in future water supply conditions 
  • Increased forest management costs due to increased drought and temperature-related wildfire risks 
  • Changes in hydropower generation and revenues associated with increased rainfall variability
  • Optimal power generation technologies and electric grid integration feasibility to align with Paris Agreement commitments and de-carbonization targets
  • Altered migration patterns within the U.S. due to shifting temperature and precipitation patterns
  • Changes in residential amenity values associated with alterations in climatic conditions

To conduct these analyses, we develop customized approaches drawing on a wide range of economic modeling techniques, including multisectoral input-output analysis, economy-wide general equilibrium. 

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