According to PERAB, implementing Home Star could impact one million U.S. workers, improve the performance of 100 million homes, and reduce the nation’s carbon footprint by five percent by 2030. The advisory board also recommended implementing Home Star in 2010 and phasing it into pending climate legislation that also addresses home performance retrofits and worker training, which could come online in 2011 and 2012.
PERAB concluded: “Retrofitting millions of American homes does not require new science or technology. It builds on existing technologies and labor skills. What is new is the national need for good jobs and carbon reductions. Home Star is the most effective way we know to generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs fast, to reduce carbon significantly by 2020, and to create a new domestic industry.”
With the President’s endorsement of an incentive program for home efficiency retrofits, it’s possible that Congress could consider the Home Star proposal as part of a jobs bill, but a bill addressing it has not yet been taken up by either the House of Representatives or the Senate.
Not everyone believes a home efficiency retrofit program is the solution to the construction industry’s unemployment and homeowners’ energy costs. On December 8, the nonprofit Architecture 2030, founded by architect and author Edward Mazria, criticized the President’s jobs plan and its home efficiency incentives proposals.
Instead of cash incentives or tax credits for energy-saving home retrofits—which Architecture 2030 maintains will not create nearly as many jobs as the President and his advisors predict—the organization would prefer to see federal investments that would reduce homeowners’ mortgage interest rates for renovating their homes or purchasing new homes that meet specific energy-use reduction goals. (Read Architecture 2030’s statement.) Such a strategy, outlined in Architecture 2030’s “14x Stimulus Plan” (read about it), would cost the government less and generate more private-sector spending per dollar invested than a home efficiency retrofit program, the organization says.
