Emergency Supplemental Appropriations

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise in support of an amendment that was filed by Chairman Bingaman, Ranking Member Murkowski and myself that would help create jobs in communities across the country and help us transition to a clean energy economy.

When Congress passed the Recovery Act last year, it recognized the challenges that many developers of alternative energy and other clean energy projects are facing in obtaining financing by expanding the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program.

This program, known as the 1705 program, is helping developers to finance their projects, create jobs and spur the development of innovative clean energy technologies across the country, including New Hampshire.

Our amendment would expand the 1705 program further to include loan guarantees for energy efficiency technologies, including making buildings energy efficient.

And that is what I want to talk about today.

I see enormous potential in reducing our Nation's energy consumption by simply investing in energy efficiency, especially through renovating existing buildings. Renovating our existing buildings is a tremendous opportunity for us to cut energy use, save money and create jobs.

According to the Energy Information Administration, buildings account for more than 48 percent of total energy consumption in the United States. That is more than the transportation sector and more than the industrial sector. More than 70 percent of the commercial buildings in this country are older than 20 years and these buildings are significantly less efficient than buildings built today. Improvements to these types of buildings can improve efficiency by 20 to 40 percent using widely available technologies and the payback period can be as little 5 years.

Updating buildings with modern energy efficiency technologies not only saves money on energy costs, it also creates jobs. Jobs in the construction industry. Jobs in the manufacturing industry. Jobs in the retail sector of the economy. These jobs can't be outsourced and they are jobs that can serve as an important part of our clean, alternative energy economy.

Yet despite all this potential, there is actually very little of this energy efficient renovation taking place because of the financial barriers. Lenders typically will not accept projected energy savings--even if guaranteed by an energy services company as sufficient collateral.

That's why I am working with Chairman Bingaman and Ranking Member Murkowski to use the DOE loan guarantee program to help unlock private capital and encourage investment in building retrofit projects and programs.

I am also working with Senator Mary Landrieu to develop legislation to further expand the DOE loan guarantee program to cover large building in the commercial sector, in schools and universities, and hospitals so that they can also be renovated to be more energy efficient.

There is so much potential that exists here and I think we need to put existing programs to work, like the loan guarantee program, to unlock private capital and reap the benefits that will come from making these buildings more energy efficient.

We have the opportunity to create jobs, support our continued economic recovery and save money by making these investments in energy efficiency.

While it is unfortunate that we could not get the amendment added to the supplemental appropriations bill, I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this important provision this year.

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