On the Hill in May and June 2025: A Breakdown of Climate, Energy, and Environmental Hearings

In May and June of 2025, Congress held a total of 60 environmental, energy, and climate-related hearings. The House of Representatives held 37 of these hearings, spanning 9 of 22. The Senate held 23 such hearings across 11 of its 20 committees.

Hearings covered issues ranging from Farm Bill conservation programs to harvesting American seafood to environmental justice. However, fiscal year 2026 appropriations took center stage, with 19 hearings considering the Trump Administration’s budget requests for the upcoming fiscal year across seven committees. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees alone held 13 hearings—six in the House and seven in the Senate. The Senate Committees on Energy and Natural Resources and on Environment and Public Works, and the House Committees on Energy and Commerce and on Natural Resources, also held environment- and energy-related appropriations hearings.

After budget and appropriations, the House Natural Resources Committee led Congressional committees with 13 hearings on climate, energy, and environmental matters. Topics of interest ranged from using public land to foster American innovation to Indigenous land usage to streamlining the State Wildlife Action Plan approval process. On the Senate side, the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation led with four hearings.

Climate resilience was a major focus across the House and Senate, with six hearings dedicated to the topic. The cross-cutting interest in adapting to a changing climate can be seen in the array of committees that held hearings on the issue, including the Senate Special Committee on Aging, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and the House Armed Services Committee—none of which are traditionally associated with climate and environmental issues. Two of the hearings, Insurance Markets and Mitigation Policies (Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs) and Insurance Industry Claims, explored the impacts of climate change and natural disasters on the insurance industry, the increasingly urgent need for accessible and transparent homeowners insurance as extreme weather becomes more frequent and widespread, and possible reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program. Two others, Energy, Installations, and Environment Update and National Defense Authorization Act, examined how the Department of Defense is integrating climate resilience and disaster preparedness into its operations and infrastructure.

As wildfire season kicked off, Congress held five hearings on wildfires and forestry, four in the House and one in the Senate. Three of the hearings focused on the Fix Our Forests Act (H.R.471/S.1462), which sets requirements for forest management as a means of wildfire prevention. The other hearings examined several bills related to wildfire research (H.R.1045), wildfire communications resilience (H.R.1655), and incorporating tribal knowledge into wildfire management (H.R.3444).

Rail modernization, innovation, and efficiency were the focus of three of the six infrastructure-related hearings, including two hearings in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s America Builds series.

Other topics of interest included expanding critical minerals development (four hearings) and advancing America’s energy resources (five hearings).

To keep up with these hearings, get EESI’s weekly Environmental and Energy Congressional Round-Up by subscribing to our biweekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions.

Author: Erin Parker