Amendment No. 3202 to the Energy Policy Modernization Bill

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am very pleased with the Senate's show of support for the Isakson-Bennet amendment, which was a modified version of the Sensible Accounting to Value Energy Act. We have been working on this bill together for more than five years.

The SAVE Act simply creates a voluntary program to encourage people to include energy efficiency in the purchase price of a new or existing home. It allows sellers the option of providing a HUD-qualified energy efficiency report to prospective buyers who are applying for a home mortgage. If that loan is backed by FHA, the energy efficiency of the home and the cost of a borrower's future energy bills will be taken into account by the mortgage lender.

Builders and manufacturers are constantly creating new energy efficient products and features, but the enhanced value and energy savings achieved by these innovations are not fully realized by the market. The passage of this amendment will for the first time provide a mechanism to account for those saving and unlock demand for new energy efficient products and significantly reduce homeowner's utility bills.

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, moving forward, we intend to work with the Senate Banking Committee and HUD to address any technical or substantive concerns that have arisen. Specifically, it is our intention to ensure that FHA has the ability to insure loans for energy efficient homes while also including protections to maintain accurate evaluations of a borrower's ability to repay.

Additionally, as this amendment is being implemented, we understand that HUD's ability to test and modify the savings that may be counted should be considered. In fact, we considered these concerns while drafting this legislation. The methodology we included for measuring energy efficient savings is an ANSI certified standard and the most widely accepted technology in today's marketplace. Over 1 million homes have already been energy rated using this technology. And this is the same underlying technology successfully utilized by the EPA's Energy Star program.

Again, we are pleased that the Senate passed our amendment, and we look forward to working with the Banking Committee and HUD on improvements.

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