by Brianna Crandall — February 21, 2011—Following his call in his State of the Union address for clean energy advances, President Obama has proposed new efforts to improve energy efficiency in commercial buildings across the country. His Better Buildings Initiative aims to make commercial buildings 20 percent more energy efficient over the next decade, and it could reduce energy bills by about $40 billion at today’s prices.
Through a series of incentives, the plan will encourage private-sector investment to upgrade all types of buildings ranging from offices and schools to universities and hospitals. In 2010, commercial buildings consumed roughly 20 percent of all energy in the U.S. economy, explains a summary of the initiative from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
The President’s budget, subject to Congressional approval, proposes to make U.S. businesses more energy efficient through a series of new initiatives: new tax incentives for building efficiency would transform the current deduction to a credit that is more generous and that will encourage building property retrofits; more financing opportunities for those commercial retrofits, with the Small Business Administration working to encourage existing lenders to take advantage of recently increased loan size limits to promote new energy efficiency retrofit loans for small businesses; and a new DOE pilot program to guarantee loans for energy efficiency upgrades at hospitals, schools and commercial buildings.
Other elements of the proposal are a “Race to Green” for state and municipal governments that streamline regulations and attract private investment for retrofit projects, using new competitive grants to states and local governments that streamline standards; a Better Buildings Challenge to spur CEOs and university presidents to make their organizations leaders in saving energy; and more training for the next generation of commercial building technology workers by launching a Building Construction Technology Extension Partnership, and by providing more workforce training in areas such as energy auditing and building operations.
The White House said the Better Buildings Initiative will complement programs already launched for government and residential buildings, such as the $20 billion in funding for building energy efficiency in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and his Executive Order directing federal agencies to achieve zero net energy by 2030 and employ high-performance and sustainable design principles for all new construction and alterations. At least 15 percent of existing buildings need to meet the Order’s guiding principles by FY 2015.
