MyNewPlace Blog

*UPDATE- House Passes HR 2454 219-212, will now head to Senate*

Today the House will vote on HR 2454, (at press time, House Minority Leader John Boehner was filibustering the House by reading selections from a 300 page amendment, you can watch live here) the American Energy and Security Act; this bill has many implications and has been supported by liberals as a necessary measure and derided as “Cap and Tax" by conservatives and. It is the centerpiece of the Democratic environmental policy and its effects, (if passed, which looks likely) are predicted to be quite far reaching.

The goal of this omnibus energy bill is to move the entire country to more sustainable, more environmentally friendly methods of producing and consuming energy. The official statement from the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and main co-sponsor Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) emphasized the benefits of HR 2454, stating, “the legislation will create millions of new clean energy jobs, save consumers hundreds of billions of dollars in energy costs, promote America's energy independence and security, and cut global warming pollution."

The main provisions are include requiring utilities to generate an increasing percentage of their power from renewable sources, establishing a cap and trade system for greenhouse gas emissions for businesses, establishing a Carbon Storage Research Corporation, revamping current power grid and transmission guidelines to update infrastructure and finally–and this part majorly affects the apartment industry–establishing new energy conservation standards for buildings.

It is indeed interesting to note that a majority of funds are allocated for “Consumer Protection," which means that consumers will be provided with federal money to defray any spike in energy costs that the bill causes.

According to the analysis from the NMHC, the building code mandates that the Secretary of Energy establish a National Energy Efficiency Building Code that is 30 percent more efficient that the 2004 version of AHSRAE Standard 90.1, and by 2014 the national code is required to be 50 percent stricter than current standards (this would apply only to buildings built after the pending legislation becomes law).

The NMHC has been alerting legislators to the fact that some regions of the country, these new codes would be impossible to meet, therefore, a strict federal one size fits all policy is not a good solution. Locations with extreme temperature changes such as apartments in Minneapolis, would have a much more difficult time meeting standards than would apartments in Los Angeles.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.