Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President. I rise today to join with my colleague and fellow member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator MARY LANDRIEU of Louisiana, to introduce the Recovery Through Building Renovation Act of 2010.

There is enormous potential to reduce our nation's energy consumption and create jobs by investing in energy efficiency, especially through renovating existing buildings.

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 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.

These investments in building efficiency pay for themselves and then some.

Most importantly, Senator LANDRIEU and I view this legislation as part of our broader effort here to create jobs and contribute to our economic recovery.

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 financial barriers. Most commercial buildings are leased and investments in energy efficiency by building owners are uncertain because the tenant, not the owner, will capture the energy savings. This is often referred to as a ``split incentive.'' Likewise, lenders typically will not accept projected energy savings--even if guaranteed by an energy services company--as sufficient collateral to finance a building renovation.

Our legislation would use the DOE loan guarantee program to help unlock private capital and encourage investment in building retrofit projects and programs.

The Recovery Through Building Renovation Act expands the existing DOE loan guarantee program to cover buildings in the commercial and industrial sectors, in schools and universities, and hospitals so that they can be renovated to be more energy efficient.

Our legislation also establishes a competitive grant program within DOE to allow states to capitalize revolving loan funds to renovate municipal buildings. This program is modeled after the highly successful Texas LoanSTAR program. Finally, it also establishes a DOE grant program to capitalize loan loss reserve funds for tax-district financing programs, such as property assessed clean energy, or ``PACE'' programs, which a number of states are utilizing.

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.

I encourage my colleagues to support our legislation.

Mr. President, 1 ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record,

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