Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Last week, the New York Senate passed legislation to take revenues from New York’s ‘cap and tax’ on carbon emissions and leverage these funds into the private financing market to make energy efficiency improvements more affordable and more accessible to New York’s homeowners.

Passed unanimously in the New York House, a Republican Senator played a key role in making this truly a bipartisan measure in the Senate. Sadly, in the fossil-foolish funded and fostered mania against the sensible Silver BB of Green Jobs, too many Republicans are walking away from smart energy and fiscal policy to avoid, it seems, the wrath of frothing Glenn Beck / et al inspired mobs.

In this case, Republican State Senator Thomas Morahan broke through the backwards-looking party partisanship to help lead the drive for passage of the Green Jobs/Green New York Act. His role already has one leading environmental commentator pegging Morahan as a hero for “opening the gates for a flood of bipartisan votes for passage.”  As commented by Dan Cantor, from the “left-wing” Working Families’ Party

“We needed a Republican vote to get it passed, and Morahan was the first to announce his support. He showed that he was going to make his decision on the merits of the bill, not party politics.”

Very briefly, what will this Act do:

• It will use $112 million of New York’s Carbon Tax proceeds
• To spark private funding of $5 billion
• To provide New York homeowners tools for energy efficiency in their homes,
• With the revenues to be paid back over time through home owner utility savings (with the payback requirement associated with the house, not the owner, in the event of sale).

Lambasted by too many with a knee-jerk ‘government is bad, burning more energy is good’ sort of attitude (see comments to Morano’s article here), this measure might actually turn out to be a net positive for the state due to the increased tax revenue through the churn of economic activity and reduced public service costs due to reducing unemployment levels. (If one seeks to be holistic about benefits, they extend further. For example, how many homes might see corollary benefits, such as the discovery of potential fire hazards during home energy audits?)

This sort of win-win-win solution, which leverages limited government funding with limited government regulation/oversight to help strengthen society and improve the economy, is just the sort of sensible action that, if given the facts and straight information, the vast majority of Americans would support.  (And, energy efficiency investments in the built infrastructure are a huge win-win-win-win space.) Sadly, too many elected Republicans seem more concerned about Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck rather than participating in sensible bipartisan legislative development.  Too many are putting ‘party politics’ above the ‘merits’ of policy.  Thomas Morahan provides an example that this isn’t an ordained position for Republican legislators.
And, just as Morahan could usefully serve as an example for national politics, the Green Jobs/Green New York Act should serve as a useful example for both other states and national policy making. The current American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act approach emphasizes giving away polluting permits, with some concepts as to how those permits would reduce the burden for the ‘average’ energy consumer. The Green Jobs/Green New York Act takes a far more direct approach, taking the revenues and directly linking them to measures that will help reduce New York’s and New York citizens’ energy, pollution, and fiscal burdens.   This sort of direct approach is almost certainly more efficient in supporting policy objectives, more likely to have equal implementation across the nation, and would be easier to trace even as it provides less ability to ‘pay off’ established (heavily polluting) interests like the coal and oil industries.

For perspectives, see:

• SolveClimate, GOP Lawmaker a Hero in Passage of $5B Green Building and Jobs Bill
• Dan Cantor, Huffington Post, Landmark Green Jobs Bill Passes Senate 52 – 8
• Matt Dernoga, The Dernogalizer, The Power of Energy Efficiency Loans
• Tom Morahan, et al, LoHud, Green jobs bill aids homeowners, environment, economy