In a speech on Tuesday, December 8 at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama singled out residential energy retrofits as one of the keys to near-term job creation for American workers. This is a big opportunity – 17 of our nation’s construction workers are out of work, and more than 20% of our nation’s carbon emissions come from residential buildings. With home retrofitting, we can put those workers back to work while making millions of US homes more energy efficient, helping homeowners everywhere save energy – and carbon and money – in the process. For more details and a transcript/video of the President’s speech, click here.
Study: Strong climate bill would create up to 2 million jobs
A well-constructed climate bill would boost the economy by $111 billion by 2020 and create 2 million jobs, according to researchers at Yale, Berkeley and the University of Illinois. The study is based on the climate and energy bill that passed the House in June and a similar measure under consideration in the Senate. It found that all 50 states would gain from a federal policy and Midwestern states would stand to gain more than coastal ones. TreeHugger (11/19)
Why we love HOME STAR, aka Cash for Caulkers
Why do we love HOME STAR, aka Cash for Caulkers? Because it’s good for America.
And we’re not the only ones – all across the country, companies large and small are voicing their support for the HOME STAR program that was recently proposed to President Obama by venture capitalist John Doerr. And now that it was covered by the New York Times last night, we’re hoping that the Obama administration will see the program as we see it: enabling a long-term industry with hundreds of thousands (and potentially millions) of new, sustainable jobs that cannot be outsourced, that helps the U.S. achieve our energy and climate goals.
Why does HOME STAR matter?
- Jobless recovery and unemployment stats are daunting; nationwide unemployment is at 10.2%, with the construction industry being one of the hardest hit at 17%.
- The program has the potential to be as successful out of the gate as Cash for Clunkers. However, it is much more than a way to get old homes retrofitted — it’s the ticket to creating new jobs to offset job losses.
- It dovetails nicely and contains the same highly vetted language found in the Waxmen-Marky Bill and Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP), Recovery Through Retrofit and ARRA investments for worker retraining.
- Through HOME STAR, $23 billion would go to support 5.9 million home energy retrofits and create more than 500,000 and up to over 1 million new jobs.
This is the piece of the puzzle that we’ve been waiting for. It’s a win-win for helping American families.
‘Cash for Caulkers’ program proposed to create jobs, meet climate goals
Riding on the recent success of the Cash for Clunkers program that gave U.S. consumers an incentive to replace their gas-guzzling cars with fuel-efficient ones, the president is considering a program that would encourage Americans to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.
John Doerr, a venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, proposed creating a Cash for Caulkers program to encourage Americans to improve their homes’ efficiency. Doerr made the suggestion at Monday morning’s meeting of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB).
In addition to creating energy savings, Doerr suggested that retrofitting more than 100 million American homes would also create “high-wage, permanent jobs that will not be out-sourced.”
“Just as the Cash for Clunkers program mobilized American car dealers to promote their fuel-efficient cars, so could a Cash for Caulkers program engage private enterprise, such as Lowe’s and Home Depot, to put private capital to work,” Doerr said.
Read the full article here: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/11/02/cash-for-caulkers-program-infrastructure-bank-proposed/
Green jobs may pay well
TAGGED WITH
There is good news for people looking to green jobs to replace some of those in the recession. Clean-tech jobs often pay well, according to a report by PayScale and Clean Edge. Most of the jobs required a bachelor’s degree, and a large portion are engineering jobs. The New York Times/Green Inc. blog (10/15)