The Senate Commerce Committee voted Do Pass last Wednesday on the PACE bill. So this win/win proposal is on its way in the upper chamber. But it’s having a tough go in the House because we live in a state where representatives propose such dim bulb ideas as a bill that would allow for light bulbs manufactured in Missouri to be stamped “made in Missouri”. Seriously. In contrast, PACE is a bill for grownups. It would allow homeowners to get long term loans for energy upgrades by applying to municipalities that have opted in. The bill would enable homeowners to see cash savings from the very first month they upgraded, it would create green jobs, and it would cost the state … nothing. What’s not to like? Twenty-eight other states have already instituted similar programs.

Our job is to make the House leadership notice good fortune when, wearing sequins and a sash that says “GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY”, it jumps up and down waving its arms in front of them. Let me inspire you to take the initiative by reprinting these grafs from a posting two years ago about Jim Trout’s run for the Senate seat in Kirkwood/Webster:

[Trout] told me that in the latter half of the nineties, Representative Sue Shear (D-HD 83) worked for several years to get health care coverage for poor disabled children. At the time, only parents at the poverty level could get coverage for such children. Insurance companies turned a cold shoulder to disabled children whose parents earned more than poverty level, even if the family could scrape together the money for premiums. Shear was proposing MC Plus, a program that enabled parents earning $39,000 or less to insure a disabled child; it guaranteed coverage and gave them some help from the state on a sliding scale.

One spring, Trout called Shear and asked where the bill stood in the legislature. It’s dead, she told him. The chair won’t let it out of committee. Trout asked her who the committee chair was, but he didn’t call the man. Instead, he called fifty of his friends and asked them to call the man–and to keep him on the phone with their complaints. Apparently, a lot of those fifty people did as they were asked. The bill made it out of committee in a jiffy and passed.

I’m writing in lieu of calling fifty people individually. And I can’t ask you to bend the ear of some committee chair, since no committee’s got the bill. You’ll need to call Speaker Ron Richard’s office (573-751-2173–ask for Kristen) and Majority Leader Steve Tilley’s office (573-751-1488). The PACE bill is HB2178.

Tell them that Missouri could save up to 30 percent of its energy costs just by creating more efficient buildings. But don’t come across as some Greenpeace-crazed, granola-munching hippie: they don’t want to hear about slowing climate change. Focus instead on eliminating the need to build another power plant. They still remember what a touchy subject that is. And even those who think climate change is some librul hoax know it’s a good idea to use less foreign oil.

Stress that the beauty of this legislation is that it is not an example of government poking its nose into people’s business. Instead, it’s a bill that simply allows citizens to do good for their state and their country even as they solve their own problems. PACE would let people do for themselves, at no cost to the state in these recessionary times. Think of it as deregulating consumers.

Right now, the leadership is overlooking a chance to gain bragging rights for years to come as the party that created thousands of jobs without spending a cent, merely by offering citizens a chance to do the right thing.

We’re not alone in pushing this project. Members of MAAEP (MO Assn. of Accredited Energy Professionals) have spent several days in the Jeff lobbying legislators. And last week MAAEP members Byron DeLear and Tom Appelbaum went to K.C. to quietly promote it to bankers and other business stakeholders. Here’s hoping DeLear and Appelbaum convinced some of those people to call legislators.

It’s worth the trouble to contact Richard and Tilley. Remember Jim Trout’s success story. But even if we don’t get it passed this spring, we’ll lay the groundwork to get off to a roaring start next January. So make those calls. I’ll be phoning Richard’s office and Tilley’s office later in the week, and I better not hear that I’m the only one. Don’t make me call y’all individually. … Okay, okay, that’s an empty threat. I don’t have phone numbers. But you get the idea.

When was the last time you took your car to a mechanic to look it over just in case he might find something that could use fixing? Never, of course. If you’ve got some bucks you can spare, you want to spend it to go to Hawaii, not to get the thingamadoodle in the innards of the engine working at peak efficiency. For the same reason, very few of us get energy audits on our homes. What? Spend hundreds of dollars on an audit so you can be told you need to spend thousands more on upgrades? Ouch.

But, but. If your house wasn’t blowing money out of drafty spots, you might save enough on utilities to actually go to Hawaii. Someday. But first you’ve got to pay for the upgrades. When Tom Appelbaum broached this subject at the Creve Coeur Democratic Township meeting, he asked rhetorically how many years it might take to get the investment back on a $7000 loan. Someone snapped right back with a facetious guess: “137 years.” Appelbaum and the other board members of Missouri Association of Accredited Energy Professionals (MAAEP) know that Missourians could cut energy use by thirty percent just by making energy efficiency upgrades, but they also know that it’s critical to help people spread the cost of the investment out over long periods of time, so that they can begin to see a positive cash flow from the improvements on day one. Otherwise? It ain’t happenin’.

‘Oh, is that all that’s needed? Well, okay,’ say the MAAEP members. ‘We can tell you how to do that.’

First of all, if you’re buying a home, look into an energy efficiency mortgage that will enable you to finance upgrades and pay for them month by month with your house payment. By doing so, you might add, say, $48 to your monthly payment–but perhaps save $80 a month on utilities. And besides the savings, your home would be more comfortable.

That’s fine for home buyers, but what about the rest of us? I’ve been in my home for 23 years, and we’re not looking to sell anytime soon. The house is 57 years old, and it’s far from efficient. There’s a bill in the Missouri legislature now, PACE for Property Assessed Clean Energy, that proposes allowing municipalities to opt to establish municipal bonds. Then property owners can apply to their municipalities for loans for energy efficiency upgrades. The loans would be amortized over twenty years and would be tied to the homeowner’s real estate tax. If the property is sold, the loan stays with the property because the improvements stay with the property. Like the energy efficiency mortgages, this setup would create a positive cash flow for the homeowner as soon as the upgrade was completed. It’s an idea spreading across the nation. Eighteen other states have already enacted similar programs.

I’ll follow the progress of that bill and report on it.

One more advantage accrues to homeowners from these upgrades: their property becomes more valuable. Because buyers want energy efficient homes, MAAEP has been working on a system to certify homes at various levels of efficiency, and they are talking to realtors in the expectation of establishing such certification as a marketing tool for realtors. A recent study done in Atlanta showed that homes certified as energy efficient sold more quickly than others and that the owners came closer to getting their asking price.

Tallying up the advantages so far then, we’ve got more comfortable homes that do less to contribute to climate change and that save us money on utilities. They are also worth more on the real estate market. Add to these benefits the fact that such upgrades will create a lot of jobs:

When you start thinking about how many houses are in Missouri and how many of these homes need energy audits and need energy efficiency upgrades, this is a trillion dollar industry over the next ten years. It’s a huge opportunity. And it’s money that we can throw away on utilities or we can invest in jobs and have people out there working to do this.

So. You ready to cough up $300-500 for an energy audit?

Blink.

I was afraid you might react that way.

But there’s little point in making improvements without one. If you don’t know for sure what needs fixing, you’re likely to just blow a lot of money. And people always assume it’s going to be the high dollar items, like windows, that need to be replaced. Actually, energy auditors are less likely to go there than they are to show you all kinds of little stuff you would never think about, like adding insulation around plumbing vent stacks.

You know you need the audit, and here’s great news: the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) will soon be receiving stimulus funds earmarked for exactly that purpose. Jim Trout, whom you may remember from his run for the state senate seat in Kirkwood in ’08, is now at the MDNR. He’s in charge of the program to dispense stimulus funds to homeowners to pay for energy audits. I’ll splash that news across the front page of Show Me Progress as soon as he tells me the funds are available.

And right after I post the news, the next thing I’m going to do is get in line for some funds.

It’s a shame how the media still bombards us with the bad news about acid rain. Not. That is so last century. And the reason we were able to curb that problem was that the Clean Air Act instituted a cap and trade system on sulfur. Utility companies analyzed the sulfur content of coal they had contracted to buy, and if it was high, they used that as a reason to void the contract and buy lower sulfur coal elsewhere, thus enabling themselves to sell their sulfur credits on a cap and trade market. It worked beautifully.

Sure, some coal companies fought the future: spread the idea that acid rain was a myth and that limits on sulfur would break the back of the coal industry. Sound familiar? But Arch Coal, headquartered in St. Louis, understood the futility of that course of action. The company dithered over whether to invest in the Powder River Basin, which had low sulfur coal that was easy to extract. Eventually, the leadership decided to make that heavy capital investment. It embraced the future instead of fighting the legislation, and that has paid off. Arch is now the number one domestic coal producer and, worldwide, the number two producer.

Tom Appelbaum, who was a coal geologist when all that was taking place, has since become a lawyer and is working with MAAEP–Missouri Association of Accredited Energy Professionals. Speaking recently at the Creve Coeur Township Democratic Club, he explained that not only will Cap and Trade work to reduce carbon emissions just as a similar system reduced sulfur emissions, it will also, like that older program, reward the forward looking companies–as well as reduce our long term energy costs. Coal companies that put money into wind turbines now and oil companies that invest in solar power will reap dividends later. Mass production, whether you’re talking solar cells or Model Ts, reduces the cost of production per unit. But first, that initial heavy capital investment has to happen.

Appelbaum applied that same lesson to a new kid on the clean energy block: highly efficient fuel cells being produced by a Silicon Valley company, Bloom Energy. Some of the heaviest hitters in the corporate world–FedEx, Wal-Mart, Staples, eBay and Google–have bought and used them in the last eighteen months. The Bloom Boxes will be available to businesses and homeowners as a way to cut energy costs in half and take themselves off the energy grid.

Sridhar [Bloom’s CEO] said the box is mostly a collection of fuel cells that use oxygen and fuel to generate electricity without creating any emissions. Oxygen is drawn into one side of the cell, while a fuel, such as a natural gas or bio-fuel, is drawn into the other side. The two combine within the cell and produce a chemical reaction that creates energy without any burning or combustion.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Sridhar said that he’s hoping to see Bloom Boxes become a common fixture in backyards and basements within 10 years. He estimated the cost of systems for individual homes at about $3,000.

Pretty exciting, right? Yes, though, like all the other clean energy alternatives, it will require that heavy initial investment. So Appelbaum foresees that the cost of dealing with climate change and weaning ourselves off foreign oil will be steep at first but that it will flatten out over time. Eventually alternative sources will:

“drive energy costs down. Dramatically. Now, in the interim, if there is an increase in energy costs, we’ve got thirty percent in our back pocket, and it’s called energy efficiency.

And that’s where MAAEP comes in. It is an association of professionals, a trade group consisting of private enterprise, non-profits and government agencies that mean to encourage energy efficiency upgrades in Missouri homes and businesses while making sure that the standards in this burgeoning business remain high.

Appelbaum’s assertion that we could save thirty percent on our energy costs is impressive. MAAEP intends to make more Missourians aware of that possibility and to show them how to get help paying for it. More on all that in the next posting.

( – promoted by Clark)

All over America, the news is spreading that long-term investment in our national infrastructure, is — amazingly — a good idea. I guess people start to wake up when bridges start to fail, schools fall apart, etc; the writing’s on the crumbling wall, so-to-speak. Rebuilding America is a trillion dollar plus project. Levees, roads, bridges.  

But while we’re in the infrastructure inventory mood, why not look at some upgrades? God knows, whenever my computer takes a dive and I’m forced to replace it, I always look to moving my specs up a notch or two, don’t you?

Current infrastructure upgrades include:

* the high-speed rail initiative catching up to technology already in wide use in other countries,

* replacing our automotive fleets and buildings with cleaner and greener options that make a real contribution toward our nation’s sustainability portfolio.

But another infrastructure upgrade, possibly the most obvious, is simply making our homes and offices more energy efficient. And this is a project that will stimulate the economy and create 2,000,000 jobs over 10-15 years. Like health care reform, infrastructure repair, energy efficiency upgrades are a trillion dollar project.

Yesterday, in Missouri, 150 concerned citizens lobbied state legislators with the common sense idea behind improving our homes to higher levels of efficiency. Politically practical approaches were laid out featuring game-changing economic initiatives to make all this improvement work and job-creation possible.

Renew Missouri and Missouri Coalition for the Environment brought together small business owners, activists, green energy experts and other stakeholders to sound these sensible arguments and deliver important information about the latest developments in energy efficiency:

Missourians Tell Legislators: Energy Efficiency Now!

New “Game-Changing” policies will save home owners money on utility bills and create thousands of in-state jobs…

Jefferson City, MO – Citizens from across Missouri convened at the State Capitol on Wednesday to urge legislators to update the state’s outdated energy efficiency policies. Participants carried signs calling for Energy Efficiency Now! while listening to state energy efficiency policy experts and Missouri home energy auditors speak of the benefits of efficiency and of legislative solutions for efficiency improvement.

PJ Wilson of Renew Missouri explained that Missouri currently ranks 41st in the country for energy efficiency, which costs Missourians millions of dollars on their electric bills each year. Missouri also has one of the nation’s fastest rising energy rates, only made worse in the struggling economy. “Energy efficiency addresses high electric bills and creates in-state jobs,” says Wilson.

PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) is one of four proposed solutions. PACE is proving to be successful in 14 states and is often consider a “game-changer” for energy efficiency and renewable energy.   PACE is state-enabling legislation that allows cities to pursue bonds to pay for a revolving loan program that lends money to both commercial and residential property owners for energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements. It alleviates the upfront cost of efficiency and renewable upgrades by allowing home or business owners to pay for over time through an additional charge on property tax.

PACE’s revenue neutral characteristics make it an easy win for legislators and municipalities; it is already receiving bipartisan support in Jefferson City. “PACE provides a longer-term financing scheme for energy efficiency upgrades, so home-owners will make improvements with very low up-front costs. By spreading out the payments over the course of 15-20 years, the energy savings gained each month on electric bills often make the upgrades net positive from day one,” says Marc Bluestone, of Missouri Association of Accredited Energy Professionals (MAAEP).

Beyond lower electric bills, pursuing energy efficiency also increases a home’s overall value. “Homes with efficiency sell faster, spend fewer days on the market, and sell for a higher percentage of the listing price. People are starting to figure out that efficiency pays while you live in a home — and when it’s time to sell a home,” said Bluestone.

Damien Flaherty, of EnergyAudits.com and MAAEP, described the overlap of economic and security benefits of efficiency. “Currently, Missouri imports 95% of its energy resources — coal, natural gas, oil — we can’t change that geological reality. But what we can improve are the 2 million homes already built in Missouri. We can make these buildings more efficient and therefore use less imported fuels. And updating our housing stock will undoubtedly create tens of thousands of in-state jobs that can’t be outsourced or sent overseas.”

After, the citizens met with legislators throughout the day encouraging action on efficiency. The Energy Efficiency Now! rally on the Capitol steps was a part of Conservation Lobby Day, an annual event sponsored by the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Missouri Votes Conservation, and the Missouri Sierra Club.

Renew Missouri recommends a suite of four “best practice” priorities, and more information can be found at http://www.RenewMo.org. Renew Missouri is a project of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, has successfully transformed renewable energy policy in Missouri with its work on the Easy Connection Act in 2007 and on Proposition C, a renewable electricity standard, in 2008.

The news of energy efficiency is spreading, and as I’ve said before, I predict that not only will every building in our country be audited and analyzed to diagnose what improvements can be made, but eventually, the idea of an energy efficiency audit and retrofit will be as commonplace as the safety and emissions test for your car — you heard it here first!