By: Josh Bihn

Josh Bihn — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

What about creating “green collar jobs” (not my term) by developing a country wide program to retrofit rental housing? Rental property is in a bit of a catch 22 if you will. The renter pays the energy bill so the property owner is not motivated to perform any energy conserving retrofits. The renter doesn’t own the building making costly renovations not worth the investment because they will not realize the increase in property value. A Canadian report showed that the average rental could cut its energy bill by fifty percent. That is a significant reduction of generated green house gas. Nice, but who’s going to pay for it? The property owner? My uncle is an environmentally minded individual and he owned two rental properties but never thought of making energy retrofits to any of his units because they were easy to rent out. Legislation with appropriate carrots and sticks would have been required.An ECOnomic stimulus plan? Provide federal seed money to fund low interest loans for property owners to make the needed renovations. The loans would be paid back into the fund over the coarse of ten years and used to fund projects on other properties brought into the rental market. In time the program could be used to retrofit government and nonprofit buildings too, further cutting our production of CO2. The housing market bubble has left the construction industry in a slump and putting that work force back in business will stimulate the economy directly while the energy conservation the renters will realize will put money back in their pockets every month. The energy costs will stabilize for the rest of us so in reality everyone will benefit.Your comments are welcome.

Comments on: Gore's call for a carbon/jobs Marshall plan

By: Josh Bihn