Building Technology

President Obama held his first prime-time press conference yesterday, fielding questions focusing on the current economic crisis and the bailout currently being debated on capitol hill.  Responding to a question on finding bipartisan solutions in the bailout, President Obama continued to support the idea of energy-efficient retrofits as a means of job creation and economic stimulus:

“This is another concern that I’ve had in some of the arguments that I’m hearing. When people suggest that what a waste of money to make federal buildings more energy-efficient — why would that be a waste of money? We’re creating jobs immediately by retrofitting these buildings or weatherizing 2 million Americans’ homes, as was called for in the package. So that right there creates economic stimulus, and we are saving taxpayers, when it comes to federal buildings, potentially $2 billion. In the case of homeowners, they will see more money in their pockets. And we’re reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the Middle East. Why wouldn’t we want to make that kind of investment?”

I couldn’t agree more.

The full text of President Obama’s press conference is available here.

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It looks like we’re not the only ones seeing the value in home energy retrofits as a means of reducing energy use and CO2 emmissions, as well as a way of creating jobs. The UK is set to announce a plan to offer a complete “eco-makeover” for one in four homes. The campaign will involve providing roughly 7 million houses a complete retrofit to improve insulation. Householders could also be encouraged to install small-scale renewable and low-carbon heating systems such as solar panels and wood-burning boilers. Details of the program have not been announced yet, but it is expected to be voluntary, possibly through loans that can be paid back over 25 years from the expected savings on energy bills.

Read more about the announcement here.

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On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed the Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act (HR 6899). While the bill itself is very wide-reaching, unfortunately the majority of it its focus (and debate) has gotten caught up in the issue of off-shore drilling, an issue that has been shown to have little impact (immediate or long term) on our national energy use and needs.[i] While the bill did pass the house, and now moves to the Senate to be voted on, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill.

Regardless of its unfortunate focus on drilling and its apparent doom by the hand of a presidential veto, the bill does include many positive provisions for efficiency in buildings. The bill also includes the GREEN Act of 2008, a bill sponsored by Rep. Perlmuttter (D-CO), a bill that FAS helped develop. Some of the many important measures included in the bill, along with some thoughts: (more…)

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Yesterday, the Center for American Progress released a report by Dr. Robert Pollin and the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute economists titled “Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy”. The report demonstrates how a new Green Recovery program that spends $100 billion over two years would create 2 million new jobs, with a significant proportion in the struggling construction and manufacturing sectors. It is clear from this research that greening of our economy is not only possible, but it will create more jobs (and better jobs) than our current economic trajectory.

One of the central approaches to this rapid green investment in communities is a large-scale building retrofit program – one of the easiest, readily available and cost-effective approaches to reducing energy consumption. But what is exciting about this report is that it shows the details of how such a program could not only reduce residential energy use, but would also spur rapid economic development. (more…)

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