White House ID's Barriers To Making Homes Energy Effecient

Text by Terrell McSweeny, Domestic Policy Adviser to the Vice President.

Vice President Biden and the Middle Class Task Force just finished unveiling the Recovery Through Retrofit Report, at a public event inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Joining the Vice President at the announcement were Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor, Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Karen Mills, Administrator of the Small Business Administration.

Last May in Denver, CO the Vice President asked the White House Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) to report back to the Middle Class Task Force with a plan to make sure that the unprecedented Recovery Act investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy lay the groundwork for a self-sustaining home energy efficiency retrofit industry -- which will create good, green jobs and save middle class families money on their energy bills. CEQ answered this call by bringing together eleven Departments and Agencies and six White House offices to develop todays report.

The report identifies three barriers that have prevented a national market for home retrofits from taking off. First, consumers dont have access to reliable information about retrofits. Second, the upfront costs of home retrofits can be high but consumers dont have access to financing. Finally, there arent enough skilled workers to serve a robust national retrofit market.

Recovery Through Retrofit is an action plan to address these barriers without new money and by using authority the federal government already has.

Heres how we will take steps toward breaking down each barrier:

First, to give consumers the information they need, the federal government will develop a standardized measure of home energy performance that is applicable to every home as well as a home performance label to signal that a home is energy efficient like ENERGY STAR® does for appliances.
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News & Politics

Tags:

• Energy
• retrofit
• recovery
• stimulus
• biden
• middle
• class
• task
• force