We haven't quite reached the end of June 2013 but there has been enormous momentum this year towards big picture solutions for tackling carbon emissions by increasing the efficiency of homes and buildings in the US. I thought it might be helpful to review some of the local and federal momentum partway through 2013.
This post will begin and end with President Obama's leadership on the issues of US energy production, consumption, and climate change. Many on the left feel he has not done enough to reduce US carbon emissions; many on the right side of the political aisle fear anything the President says about carbon emission solutions will lead towards bigger government verging on Marxism. There is no question that both sides deserve the right to express facts and opinions concerning worries that the US is not moving quickly enough to tackle the threat of climate change, or that the President's solutions could cause the price of power to rise substantially for large end-users of power; namely our manufacturing and industrial sectors. I would like to personally applaud the President for leadership in energy issues with a thoughtful eye on both arguments.
At the beginning of the year in the President's inauguration address on January 21st he stated, "We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations...The path towards sustainable energy solutions will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it."
A long and difficult path could have been a reference to decisions that our country faces on the benefits/costs of fracking for oil and natural gas, the Keystone pipeline, investment in renewable energy, or permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel, or perhaps all of the above.
On February 21st the the President's State of the Union address he said, "I'm also issuing a new goal for America: let's cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next twenty years. The states with the best ideas to create jobs and lower energy bills by constructing more energy efficient buildings will receive federal support to help make it happen." As a Massachusetts resident this sentence made me very happy.
In February Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was awarded the "Green Governor of the Year" award by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Sierra Club.
At the beginning of March the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) published a new study titled, "What Do Home Buyers Really Want?" Answer number one was energy efficiency.
In mid March an extensive study of energy efficient homes and their home buyers relationship to the marketplace was released by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for Community Capital. In the study author Dr. Nikhil Kaza states that owners of energy efficient homes are 32% less likely to default on their mortgages and that "the mortgage-lending process does not include the financial benefits of energy efficient savings in its underwriting decisions."
In April, a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) was trotted out before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The bill would authorize a state-based private financing program to
encourage energy efficiency upgrades, direct the federal government to
undertake energy-saving practices and roll out voluntary efficiency
standards for new building codes.
