Friday, May 15, 2009, 9:00am – 10:35am
WASHINGTON, DC—Building efficiency retrofits serve the triple benefits of mitigating global warming emissions, reducing energy bills, and creating good, local jobs. Residential buildings alone account for 21percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and substantial efficiency savings are obtainable through easy and proven techniques. Yet if energy-efficiency retrofits offer such obvious environmental, economic, and employment benefits, why have they been so slow to materialize? The answer lies in a host of market failures, and developing viable, scalable solutions has proven challenging—until now.
A new report from the Center for American Progress, the Center for Working Families, and Half in Ten provides a policy roadmap for New York State to achieve mass-scale, energy-efficiency retrofits of 1 million housing units over the next five years.
The program will:
· Combat climate change by reducing home energy consumption by 30 percent to 40 percent. This reduction will avoid the need for new power plants and cut residential energy use—which is responsible for 40 percent of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions.
· Create 60,000 green job-years directly related to the expansion of retrofit work and another 60,000 job-years indirectly through additional economic activity.
· Save New York households more than $1 billion annually through reduced home energy use and energy bill savings, with consumer protections to maximize benefits of lowered housing costs.
· Leverage $5 billion in private investments to pay for retrofits through the creation of an innovative financing model to secure third-party investments.
Green Jobs/Green Homes NY will be the largest residential retrofit program ever initiated in the United States and can serve as a model for the nation on how to combat global warming, save consumers money, and create good clean-energy jobs.
Keynote Speaker: Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality
Featured Panelists: Lavon Chambers, Community Affairs Officer, New York State Laborers Local 10 Lisa Donner, Executive Director, Half in Ten Campaign Mark Dyen, Senior Vice President, Conservation Services Group Emmaia Gelman, Director of Green Policy, Center for Working Families
Moderated by: Bracken Hendricks, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Closing Remarks Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY)
Breakfast will be served at 8:30 a.m.
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Location
Center for American Progress Action Fund 1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor Washington, DC 20005
Map & Directions 
Nearest Metro: Blue/Orange Line to McPherson Square or Red Line to Metro Center
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