Full Title: Extreme Heat in Disadvantaged Communities
Author(s): Judsen Bruzgul, Mason Fried, Durban Keeler, Adam Parris, and Raquel Silva, ICF
Publisher(s): ICF Climate Center
Publication Date: June 10, 2024
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Extreme heat is one of the deadliest and most widespread climate change risks. It’s particularly dangerous for disadvantaged communities, which are least able to prepare for, withstand, and recover from the impacts of extreme heat.
Fortunately, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) include record amounts of funding to address climate change and its impacts. In addition, the federal government’s Justice40 Initiative1 set a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of federal funding for climate change flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.
In this report, the ICF Climate Center leverages the latest climate projections with ICF’s market-leading climate risk analytics platform, ClimateSight®, to understand how people living in “communities that are marginalized and overburdened by pollution and underinvestment,” as defined by the Justice40 Initiative, could potentially be exposed to extreme heat in the coming decades. Because the risks of extreme heat are acute for human health and energy reliability, the analysis focuses on potential exposure to extreme heat levels that have impacts on those two areas.