The US Office of Financial Research (OFR) has initiated a pilot program for a climate data and analytics hub aimed at assisting regulators in evaluating the financial stability risks associated with climate change.
This pilot program will enhance access to public climate and financial data, along with advanced computing tools and analytical software. Participants will have the opportunity to merge data from various federal sources, such as wildfire impacts, crop conditions, and precipitation statistics, with public supervisory data, offering a clearer understanding of the interplay between climate change and financial stability risks.
Initially, access to the pilot will be restricted to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with plans to eventually extend availability to all member agencies of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.
Nellie Liang, the Treasury Department’s under secretary for domestic finance, emphasized the importance of integrating climate and financial data, which is often kept in separate silos, in order to deliver more accurate assessments of financial risks posed by climate change. She stated, “Today, the Office of Financial Research is taking an important step toward enabling policymakers to better understand and address risks to the financial system posed by climate change. By providing a shared database of both climate and financial data along with high-powered computing tools, OFR’s climate hub pilot will streamline regulators’ access to critical information, offering a new and more comprehensive perspective on climate-related financial risks.”