Building An Energy-Efficient America

In September, Environment America partnered with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy to release a report on the economic and environmental impacts of the proposed energy efficiency measures in the federal clean energy bill. The report found that strong policies would create almost 570,000 new jobs and save American families over $280 a year on their energy bills by 2020. Click here to read "Energy Efficiency in the American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009: Impacts of Current Provisions and Opportunities to Enhance the Legislation".

Americans are working to reduce our dependence on dirty fossil fuels and help solve global warming, and a great place to start is the buildings we live and work in every day. Buildings account for almost half our energy use and pollution, so they’re a critical part of any strategy to take back control of our failing energy economy.

We have the technology and skills to vastly improve the efficiency of our buildings, and yet many builders and landlords are designing and maintaining buildings without paying attention to the looming threat of global warming or skyrocketing energy prices. We need to change that by putting policies in place to guarantee minimum efficiency standards for new buildings and encourage upgrades to the buildings we already have. That way, we can reduce the amount of energy we use, the amount of money we spend, and the amount of pollution we emit into the atmosphere.

Environment America’s goal is to reduce overall building energy consumption 40 percent by 2030 and 75 percent by 2050. We can achieve this by ramping up efforts to improve our existing buildings with weatherization and retrofits and by making all new buildings zero net energy by 2030. These are buildings that are so efficient that they can produce all the power they need right on-site from renewable sources like wind and solar.

We’re pushing strong energy efficiency policies at all levels of government to secure the greatest possible energy savings for the country as a whole. Our current priorities include:

• Convincing states to adopt the latest model building codes, which establish required levels of efficiency for new buildings. The newest code is almost 20 percent stronger than the previous version thanks to our efforts at the code development hearings in 2008.
• Encouraging cities to strengthen their codes above and beyond the state-level minimum.
• Establishing tax rebates and loans for energy retrofits and solar panels.
• Pushing states to adopt zero net energy goals for their businesses and homes.
• Requiring gas and electric utilities to invest in energy conservation programs.
• Improving the efficiency of lighting, furnaces, and electronic appliances like televisions and computers.
• Pushing for the strongest possible national building efficiency codes as the federal clean energy bill moves through the Senate, and ensuring that the final bill provides funding for state and local weatherization and retrofit programs.