“

Back when I was manufacturing novelties in 1979, the Second Oil Crisis prompted a Eureka moment.  Like the Arab Oil Embargo of ’73-’74, it created long gas lines over night.  In anticipation of a reprise, I concocted the Gas Line to give expression to people’s frustration.

This brainstorm was inspired by the tongue-in-cheekiness of the Pet Rock which was one of the top 10 toy crazes of all time.  The Gas Line was an 18” length of nylon rope tied in a noose that came in a box designed like a gas pump.  Like the Pet Rock, there was an instruction manual: “Burned up because some car just cut in front of you on the gas line?  Stick one end of the Gas Line in his gas tank, light the other end and watch him burn up.”  Thousands of Gas Lines were noosed up and ready to be hung from rearview mirrors across America when, as quickly as the ’79 gas lines appeared, they disappeared.  I wasn’t the only one stuck with inventory; the U.S. government was obliged to shred five billion unused gas rationing coupons.

Between the two oil crises of the ‘70s, the price of oil jumped from $3/bbl to nearly $40/bbl, a level that would not be exceeded, adjusted for inflation, until 2008.  Various energy remedies were engaged, from solar panels on the White House to Jimmy Carter’s cardigan sweater.  The most sweeping systemic prescription was offered by an Oregon senator:  "Set up a capability in government to budget according to flows of energy rather than money….  Energy is the currency around which we should be basing our economic forecasts, not money supply." 

This proposal was not unprecedented.  In the depths of the Great Depression with oil going for 10¢/bbl, a group of industrial engineers proposed that currency be based on units of energy, like a joule, which is the amount of energy required to lift the weight of one Newton, i.e. a small apple, one meter.  Commodities were to be priced according to the amount of horsepower or kilowatt hours of energy expended in producing them.  Energy cards would be punched based upon the energy content of commodities purchased.  Consumption would balance production and depressions and unemployment would be avoided.  Or so the thinking went in the Era of Grand Designs.

The Federal Nonnuclear Energy Research and Development Act of 1974 called for an economy based on the “potential for net energy.”  As market pricing insufficiently internalizes externalities such as pollution, net energy analysis factors for the thermodynamic potential sequestered in materials and the energy embodied in capital.  Net energy analysis lays the groundwork for a balanced playing field by measuring, projecting and mitigating emissions from smokestacks, tailpipes and production.

Economists have not been so hot to trot with the energy theory of value.  The gloomy scientists view net energy analysis on par with the labor theory of value, Carnot and Kelvin substituting for Marx and Engels.  Most economists posit that the market price system is most suited to provide mechanisms and incentives for optimal deployment of variable inputs, including energy in its commoditized form.

Energizers would respond that while a dollar is worth more or less any given day, a unit of heat or work is the same in 1933, 1974 or 2011.  Energy is present in all processes and minimizes the ‘apples to oranges’ conundrum by juicing and weighing variables of impacts, material, and capital.  Energy equivalents for human activities such as major surgery would have to be gauged.  While piezoelectric can harvest motion in surgery to recharge an i-Pad, that is hardly compensation for the surgeon.

Cap & trade (C&T), or cap and dividend, its populist variation, are trading regimens or schemes, as the Europeans call them.  C&T is modeled on the successful mitigation of acid rain during the administration of Bush Senior. It is designed to be a market maker for the cost of carbon embodied to one degree or another in all generation and production.  Detractors of C&T say, among things, that it would become another murky trough for the giant vampire squids of Wall Street.  Thus, last year, C&T got knee-capped by the fossil fuel shills in Congress flying under the anti-tax flag. 

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a C&T program that joined ten Northeastern states.  Beginning in 2008, carbon credits auctions have financed clean energy programs like Green Jobs/Green NY.  Recently it has come under assault and been abandoned by New Jersey, other states to follow, perhaps.  The harbinger of this fallout came last fall when Koch Bros-financed Americans for Prosperity bused Tea Baggers from Jersey to lower Manhattan to protest a periodic carbon credits auction.  Given that carbon dioxide was fetching a measly $1.86 a ton, the Kochs clearly have no compunction about pulling the plug on life-support for energy efficiency.

How receptive would the Kochs and their fossil fueler cohorts be to the monetization of energy?  Fellow Libertarians like Ron Paul have been urging for decades that we bling back the gold standard.  But energy is far more fungible and, unlike gold, available in ample quantity to supplant trillions in paper currency. 

To show support for Crown Joules, how about a hangman’s noose for your rearview mirror?   I happen to have some ready to go.



Freedom of Choice is just another catch phrase for You’re Being Had.  Stall&bump…pocket picked.  Divert, subvert, ka-ching.  Bulb Wars is but the latest canard designed to distract, undermine and diminish you, fellow Americans. 

Among numerous provisions in the Energy independence and Security Act of 2007 was one setting standards for more efficient lighting.  Signed into law by President George W Bush, the act also called for a gas mileage boost to 35mpg by 2020.  While Detroit couldn’t muster the muscle to blunt that upgrade, fossil fuelers in the Senate stripped out provisions that would have provided for renewable portfolio standards via elimination of $20+ billion in oil and gas subsidies.

Now the “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act,” has been reintroduced by Rep. Michelle “Minute Mom” Bachmann (R-MN) to strip incandescent provisos from the 2007 law.  What can we expect from the foxy, pitchbabe in response to Glenn Beck’s Bachmann fantasy “just you and me in the incandescent glow”? ‘Glenn, they’re gonna have to peel the incandescent bulb from my cold, dying fingers!’  

Never mind that section 321 of Public Law 110-140 does not, in fact, ban incandescent.  Ignore that the electronics industry has responded with a 30% more efficient incandescent in the meantime.  Facts get obfuscated by the fog-machines of these campaigns.  Refer all queries to the Rovian Rule: ‘Empires create their own reality.’

If lord&master doesn’t spin your world, what are you going to do?  Socratic reasoning falls largely on plugged ears in unreasonable times.  Maybe it’s time to equip yourself with more than moral outrage.  Consensus doesn’t cut it in a knife fight.  Wake up and smell the gunpowder.  If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  Long enough, that is, to get their playbook then beat them at their own game.  It’s a war game in which there is an enemy, an Achilles heel that succumbs to assault providing plunder for further assault.

Make no mistake about it.  War is being waged over the future of this country.  If you’re outgunned and outspent, you best outsmart.

As politics is warfare by other means, kick off with von Clausewitz.  Considering insurgency?  Recon with Kilcullen.  For mastering manipulation, Machiavelli’s your man.  To control the great unwashed, it’s    divide and conquer as practiced by the British Raj.  If you’re uneasy at the very thought of contemplating war, maybe the Zen of Sun-Tzu is for you.  

Then there is the Smash-Mouth Playbook which, in, a nutshell, is ‘three yards and a cloud of dust.’

Smash-Mouth is how the increasingly infamous and combative Koch Bros run it.  Charles and David Koch** are the twin-headed Monty Burns of the Dirty Economy.   Most recently, the Kochs bankrolled capture of the Wisconsin statehouse with and eye to killing collective bargaining and WalMarting more of middle-class America.  Plays were run to smash-mouth perfection.  

• First, they targeted a vulnerable foil in publicly-employed teachers. 
• Second, everyone was reminded of teacher privileges that draw double the benefits for half the work of hard-pressed taxpayers.  
• Third, blame for all this largesse was hung on the socialistic credo of collective bargaining.  
• In the dust-up, another union piggy bank got broken, exposing future targets to greater vulnerability. 

Hit-drive-& desire. 

To review, here’s how Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust is run:

1)      Target vulnerability/ID threat. 

2)      Insert wedge/raise fear. 

3)      Hammer away/building momentum. 

Under dust-up, spread the field and grab collateral for more assault.

Even when smash-mouth does not chalk up a win, it does send an intimidating message.  Last fall, Koch strategy and money (drawn from their $45B fortune) were behind Proposition 23, designed to gut California’s iconic clean energy law.  This assault was the equivalent of the Sierra Club seeking closure of refineries in Texas.  And the Kochs don’t buy Peak Oil theory.  On the contrary, as Wikileaked Saudi cables revealed, oil&gas oligarchs are far more concerned about competitive threat to revenue streams posed by clean energy. 

Can the Kumbaya/consensus crowd countenance concepts of combat that are culturally counter-intuitive to them?  Hacktavists of Anonymous and Stuxnetting saboteurs pose stealthy, tactical promise, but who you gonna call?  Clearly, not all bad actors will succumb to Twitter revolutions.   God helps those who help themselves, fellow Americans.  For your first exercise in strategic smash-mouthing, Google “FHFA>Babylon”.  Break down FHFA, aka Fannie Mae&Freddie Mac, into their constituent vulnerabilities, threat posed, means of assault and takeaway.  It you have what it takes to save our future, we’ll be in touch.



“In this time of uncertainty around the ability and resolve of governments to lead the planet to low-carbon prosperity, it is up to businesses and cities to step up and assume responsibility,” said Sir Richard Branson, Co-Founder of the Carbon War Room.  “Mayors are the entrepreneurs of the civic world who realize their pivotal role in the fight against climate change.”



“Babylon is eager to work alongside the caliber of expert personnel at the Carbon War Room like Jigar Shah,” said Supervisor Steve Bellone.  “We are confident that the Carbon War Room will help to shape Babylon’s operational Long Island Green Homes program so that it can go to scale.  Ours has already been an exemplar for many other municipalities in the U.S. and Canada.  We have sought market-based solutions since the inception of our program in 2008 and first interacted with Jigar who generously shared insights based on his pioneering work on power purchase agreements.  Working with Carbon War Room, we will establish program discipline, uniform loan products and demand drivers that will result in unprecedented market penetration for energy efficiency.  To be doing this in the company of larger cities, like our neighbor New York, will be a major game changer.”

“These cities are committed to taking immediate action to be a part of a movement that will create jobs, help local economies thrive, and green cities around the world,” said Jigar Shah, Chief Executive Officer of the Carbon War Room.  “These cities, along with many others that applied for the first wave, have pioneering sustainability visions, but they cannot do it on their own.  The Carbon War Room is committed to working with them to create the mechanisms that will allow cities and the private sector to work together to make these visions a reality.”

From there it was up to Yale to speak about "Best Practicves and Local-level Leadership for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy."  The sessions that included panelists from New York City, Seattle, India and China was filmed for dissemination throughout the world by the US Department of State.  Later that afternoon, Matt Rogers, Senior Advisor to DOE Secretary Chu for Recovery Act Implementation, addressed the gathering at the LEED Platinum-certified Kroon Hall at the School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences.  He described how he had been on the horn with formula grant recipients in the hinterlands cajoling them to get stimulus money out the door.  He also described a crack corps of grant evaluators who were determining the most qualified recipients for competitive funds.  I resisted the impulse to disabuse him of his contention, opting, rather, to praise the relationship his boots on the ground in Babylon had developed with the DOE staffers who had had engaged us so consistanly, spotlighting our progress in three DOE webinars.  We both concurred on how gratifying it was to see a re-energized DOE.

Later, at dinner in Woolsey Hall, I punctuated another Rogers presentation with the suggestion that he use his bully pulpit to get Girl Scouts to sell CFLs instead of transfat cookies.  At the following day's sessions, that rallying cry was echoed a couple of times.  Among those others with whom I had the opportunity to interact, were a couple of Senate staffers and the environmental editor at the Wall Street Journal.  Also got to catch up with the grad students who had me address the "Megawatts on Main Street" series they ran through the Yale School on Business and Environment.  There is no substitue for the caliber of contacts you make in these settings, not to mention the added material for my future self-help best-seller, Five-Minute Friends.

Don't take my incredulity for it.  Here's what a 25yrs energy efficiency practicioner of national note who actually wrote two of the Retrofit grant winners had written after declaring that the grant language sounded as if it had been written for the Babylon program:

*12/11/09- “Dorian: I am convinced that your proposal will be the strongest from the mid-Atlantic states, mostly due to Babylon program.  I am working on three RRU proposals.”

12/15/09- “Dorian: WOW!   I’d say you will win going away!” 

4/13/10- “GOOD LUCK in RRU.  I don’t know about you, but I am a nervous wreck waiting. I continue to predict your proposal will be among the winners.”                

So I drank the Kool-Aid of Original Intent in the DOE FOA language which anyone can read in our grant section.  And for those academics who have an interest in post mortems, both the operational LI app and aspirational NYS/NYC apps can be found for comparison sake in 'Grants' along with a couple of others, including a very intriguing proposal from Seattle.  Note, for example, that while hundreds of retrofits have been done on LI, NYC wouldn't be extending its first loan until eleven months in.  Oh, and there is also a graphic PPT, "Thriving Without" that visualizes our perspective on the process.

My wife said, by way of consoling, "Now you know what Al gore felt like."  Yeah, those blasted @#%*! activist judges.

Virgin Galactic's Sir Richard Branson, who hosted the Carbon War Room, with the Vancouver Olympics as backdrop, imparts some fundamental principles to all those who are considering what it takes to set up a first-rate energy efficiency program.

1] Screw It, Lets Do It

2] Have fun

3] Be bold, but don't gamble

4] Challenge yourself

5] Stand on your own feet

6] Live the moment

7] All you have is a good name

8] Do some good

9] Value your family and friends

10] You fail if you don’t try

11] Be willing to make a fool of yourself  & make people smile



Last year, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group fame founded the Carbon War Room (CWR) along with Craig Cohut, founding partner of Pegasus Capital, and Idan Ofer, chairman of Better Place and Zim Shipping.  Their “mission is to ensure the continued viability of life on this planet by developing a post-carbon economy.”  And Jigar Shah, as CEO, has been charged with bringing the good offices of the Carbon War Room to bear on the challenges of bringing energy efficiency to the built environment worldwide.  To that end, CWR hosted a summit in Vancouver during the first week of the Olympics consisting of financiers, sustainability officers, and not-for profit administrators from throughout the world.  Babylon was honored to be among the participants. 

WHY PARTICIPATE IN THE CHALLENGE?

v  The purpose of the Green Capital – Global Challenge is to get substantial private-sector money quickly flowing into energy efficiency and renewable generation projects in cities that are highly motivated and have the team and plan in place to make it happen.

v  The resulting city-led financing initiatives will bring economic development to their cities, create jobs, reduce energy costs for their residents and businesses; and enable achievement of their emissions reduction targets.

v  Figuring out what to do and what has worked well and poorly in other places is challenging for any stakeholder, so the Global Challenge is designed to provide substantial additional support to cities, financial partners, and solution providers in making this happen.

CARBON WAR ROOM’S ROLE

v  The Carbon War Room will put its weight of support behind the most ambitious teams in a ‘first wave’ of 5-10 cities, aiming to get deals completed by end 2010. It will also start to nurture the ‘second wave’ of 25-30 cities, for deal completion in 2011. The pace of development will be driven as much by the city as by Carbon War Room.

Tuesday February 16th — Day One

Location: Pan Pacific Hotel

Setting the stage for the Green Capital – Global Challenge

v  • Jigar Shah, CEO, Carbon War Room

0915-1015 A Perspective from City Leaders— What Cities Need in Order to Implement Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Financing: Obstacles and Ideas for Resolution

Cities have yet to widely adopt EERE financing programs. This session will cover lessons learned and implementation challenges from the perspective of city leadership.

Moderator:

v  Sadhu Johnston, Deputy City Manager, City of Vancouver

Speakers:

v  Sandy Taylor, Head of Climate Change and Sustainability, City of Birmingham, UK

v  Dorian Dale, Energy Director and Sustainability Officer, Babylon, NY

v  Karoline Steen, Deputy Director of Sustainability and International Affairs, City of Copenhagen….

v  Wednesday February 17th– Day Two

v  0930-1000 Launch of the Green Capital — Global Challenge

v  The Green Capital – Global Challenge is a roadmap for accelerated city action to transform the built environment in time for the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

v  Speakers:

v  Gregor Robertson, Mayor, City of Vancouver

v  Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group and Founder of the Carbon War Room

v  José María Figueres, Chairman of the Carbon War Room, Former President of Costa Rica and Former CEO of World Economic Forum



Long Island Green Homes and Buildings Consortium Retrofit Ramp-up Proposal

“Let’s figure out what projects, what investments are going to give the American economy the most bang for the buck, how can we protect taxpayer dollars,…create the jobs that are so desperately needed, and spur on economic growth and business creation in the private sector.”                   -President-Elect Barack Obama,  11/18/08 

Executive Summary

Set in quintessential suburbia, Long Island Green Homes (LIGH), a residential retrofit program, has been operational since the fall of 2008.  In coordination with Long Island’s Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) sub-grantee and other key stakeholders, LIGH is set to go to scale in eight towns with a combined population of 1.9M and 527K detached houses.  Developed and launched by the Town of Babylon (pop. 216,000), LIGH has exceeded its pilot target of 250 deep retrofits, surpassing the results of many conventional home performance programs.  LIGH’s municipally-administered delivery system has eliminated customary barriers by providing one-stop retrofits to homeowners for whom it is now easy to make their homes more comfortable and affordable.   LIGH contractors have increased their employee rolls as traditional builders have become BPI-certified to work in the program.  Tradesmen and women are being put to work to save homeowners money in a municipally-financed program that gets its money back.

LIGH helps homeowners to make energy-saving improvements to their homes with almost no upfront costs for the homeowners.  This results in lower utility bills for the homeowners, reduction in energy use and less pollution in our communities. The improvements are made possible by the use of Benefit Assessment PACE financing. Beyond the economic impact of saving utility consumption in our communities, the program also is a major provider of jobs in small family-owned construction companies, who are licensed by the town to conduct the improvements.

The Long Island Green Homes & Building Consortium (LIGHBC) will make a significant impact on the regional residential and commercial energy markets.  The key to the expanded program is partnership among the participating Towns, each of whom has established its own EECBG initiatives, which will be supplemented and enhanced by this group effort.  The not-for-profit CDC of Long Island (CDC-LI), the WAP and American Recovery and Reinvestment (ARRA) sub-grantee for Nassau and Suffolk Counties, which has provided weatherization assistance to 15,000 residential units over the past 20 years, will be the fiscal agent for the program and carry out all important administrative duties. Under this expanded program, each participating municipality will establish a local office of LIGH with a Project Director, web site and telephone “green line.”  The Consortium also involves participation and involvement of many Long Island leaders in the fields of energy, education, and business.

LIGH’S success in Babylon has drawn significant attention nationwide.  Through the not-for-profit The Babylon Project (TBP), program development and expertise have been shared with municipalities from Montgomery County, Maryland to Portland, Oregon.  TBP has provided on-going support to neighboring Brookhaven in the introduction of its own Green Homes program.  A total of 8 Long Island towns (Babylon, Brookhaven, Huntington, Islip, North Hempstead, Oyster Bay, Smithtown and Southampton) have committed 20% from their EECBG formula allocation to provide revolving funds for the launch of their own Long Island Green Homes and Buildings (LIGHB) programs.  Formal establishment of the Consortium is dependent on securing DOE funding under this Retrofit Ramp Up application.

As LIGHB rolls out across the region, TBP experience will continue to guide retrofit work on Long Island, helping to develop ways to offer the same one-stop retrofit process to commercial and multi-residential buildings that has proven so successful with single-family detached houses.  Babylon is already carrying out such initiatives with its EECBG-funded GreenCom Program.

One core feature of the LIGH model is Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, which assigns the cost of the finished work via a benefit assessment attached to the property. Though Babylon has historically financed the retrofit work with its own funds, the senior lien status securitizes the completed retrofit loan, making it a key feature in attracting equity from private investors. The expansion of LIGH across Long Island will provide our consortium members with the opportunity to operationalize PACE financing with $200 million of capital raised from private investment interests.

From its inception, Long Island Green Homes has drawn on an array of stakeholders to enhance its effectiveness.  LIGH has established a strong working relationship with the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), National Grid, and oil heat providers in our region.  The Long Island Energy Task Force/Sustainability Institute at Molloy College will participate in the role of advocacy and marketing.  A force of building performance contractors, trained by LIPA, is joining with the building trades to establish a corps of eligible contractors.  The Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center at Stony Brook University (SUNY) in conjunction with Brookhaven National Laboratory will engage in quantitative analysis and performance evaluation.  SUNY Farmingdale, New York Institute of Technology, Hofstra University and Suffolk County Community College are all available to provide various levels of program-related training.  In addition, NYSERDA has included LIGH staff in both its Finance and Implementation Working Groups for its roll-out of the Green Jobs-Green New York program.  CDC-LI also serves on the NYSERDA outreach committee for Green Jobs-Green NY.



I've always been a bit of an energy efficiency nut.

I've made it my mission to cut the utility bills at every home we've owned. Long before I learned about the risks of climate change, I was fanatical about energy efficiency because I'm cheap.

Whenever my wife and I move into a new home, I check the attic for adequate insulation. I look for leaks around doors and windows and install a programmable thermostat if needed. In our latest home, I've also insulated our water pipes with inexpensive foam from our local hardware store and painted mastic sealant on the seams of the air ducts. When our hot water heater needed replacement, we installed a tank-less water heater which decreased our summer-time gas use by 50%. In the summer, we found that setting the thermostat at 77 - 78 degrees and a gentle breeze from a fan was all that is required to be comfortable.

So far, we are on track to cut our utility bills by about half compared to the previous owner, but we are doing more. Our home has two large skylights that funnel too much heat out in the winter and let too much heat in the summer. We intend to replace these older windows with modern widows with five times the efficiency.

Taking these steps is called "weatherization." I would rather call it "saving money by saving energy." Over the next several years, we want to help millions of American families seize the same opportunity to cut their utility bills by making their homes and appliances more energy efficient while increasing comfort.

We are making a major down payment on this effort through the President's economic recovery plan.

First, the Recovery Act expanded tax credits for energy efficiency upgrades to your home. If you purchase and install certain energy-efficient windows, insulation, doors, roofs, or heating and cooling equipment, you can receive a tax credit for 30% of the cost, up to $1,500. For example, if insulating your attic costs around $1,600, you'll receive a $480 tax credit, and you could save up to $200 on your utility bill each year.

Second, we are launching an innovative new effort called "Retrofit Ramp Up" that will simplify and reduce the cost of home retrofits by funding pioneering programs that reach whole neighborhoods and towns. If we can energy audit and retrofit a reasonable fraction of the homes in any given residential block, the cost will be greatly reduced. Programs such as these will decrease barriers to saving money: inconvenience, inertia, and inadequate information. We want to make home energy efficiency upgrades irresistible and a social norm for homeowners.

This effort could offer homeowners innovative ways to finance the upfront investments they can't afford on their own. For example, homeowners might receive a loan for an energy improvement and pay back the principal and interest over time via an assessment on their property tax bill. The homeowners might pay an extra $400 per year on their property tax bill but save $500 a year on their utility bill. Since the financing would be attached to the property tax bill, both the savings and the loan payments stay with the house if the owners decide to sell.

Finally, for low-income families who are hit hardest by high utility bills, the Recovery Act provides $5 billion for home weatherization. This is the largest single investment in home energy efficiency in U.S history. This program is creating jobs now, putting money back in the pockets of hardworking Americans, reducing our environmental footprint, and making these homes more livable. However, some people - including me - have been frustrated that the program started off more slowly than we'd hoped.

It took a few months for states to develop their plans and for the Energy Department to ensure those plans met the highest standards of accountability. We also used this time to work with the Labor Department to establish standards that guarantee these jobs pay a fair wage. States and their local weatherization agencies also began training this new workforce and buying millions of dollars in necessary equipment and materials, like caulk guns, insulation blowers, and service vehicles. We are taking the care and time necessary to make sure these taxpayer dollars are well spent.

Those purchases are creating jobs. A good example is an insulation machine manufacturer called Krendl in Delphos, Ohio. Because of Recovery Act-driven purchases, Krendl has expanded its workforce by 30 percent, and one of Krendl's distributors, Applied Energy Products, Inc., increased its staff by almost 60 percent.

Here's more good news:

• All 50 states have received 100% of their Recovery Act weatherization funding and have begun to double and triple their home energy efficiency efforts. Workers are being hired, homes are being improved, and families are being helped.
• In September, we estimate we weatherized 15,000 - 20,000 homes - the fastest pace in the 30 year history of the Weatherization Assistance Program. We expect to be weatherizing 20,000 to 30,000 homes per month soon.
• This effort has already created or saved thousands of jobs, and the pace of hiring is accelerating. The Department of Energy and our partners have an aggressive training and technical assistance program to continue to invest in green workforce development.

We're training a workforce and building a home energy efficiency industry that will be a crucial part of America's new, clean energy economy. As states, utilities and private companies increasingly pursue home energy efficiency - in part because of the innovative incentive programs I described earlier - we will have the capacity to help millions of Americans lower their utility bills.

Energy efficiency is simply good economics. It will save you money. It will create jobs. It is a way for you to personally decrease your carbon emissions and help save our planet.

The *Recovery Through Retrofit *Report builds on investments made in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) to expand the home energy efficiency and retrofit market. Home retrofits can potentially help people earn money, as home retrofit workers, while also helping them save money, by lowering their utility bills. By encouraging nationwide weatherization of homes, workers of all skill levels will be trained, engaged, and will participate in ramping up a national home retrofit market.

*Support Municipal Energy Financing *
Property tax or municipal energy financing allows the costs of retrofits to be added to a homeowner’s property tax bill, with monthly payments generally lower than utility bill savings. This arrangement attaches the costs of the energy retrofit to the property, not the individual, eliminating uncertainty about Recovery Through Retrofit recovering the cost of the improvements if the property is sold. Federal Departments and Agencies will work in partnership with state and local governments to establish standardized underwriting criteria and safeguards to protect consumers and minimize financial risks to the homeowners and mortgage lenders.

*Expand State Revolving Loan Funds *
Expanding state revolving loan funds from 16 states to all 50 states will leverage private capital and achieve economies of scale necessary to produce consistent and affordable loan products.

Support Municipal Energy Financing
The Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs enable the costs for energy efficiency retrofits to be added to an owner’s property tax bill as part of a municipal property tax assessment, which takes the same priority as traditional property tax liens and assessments….DOE will be funding model PACE projects, which will incorporate the new principles for PACE program design.

Expand State Revolving Loan Funds
Revolving Loan Funds for energy efficiency retrofits in homes already exist in 16 states.

Improve Energy Efficient Mortgages
Energy Efficient Mortgages (EEMs) enable home buyers and homeowners refinancing their properties to add energy efficiency upgrades and improvements to their properties as part of the underlying mortgage financing transaction

Develop Consistent Workforce Certifications and Training Standards
Advance a nationally recognized worker certification standard for comprehensive training that provides evidence that a worker is well qualified to properly complete efficiency and healthy home retrofits.