Happy Black Friday everybody. The day after Thanksgiving. The biggest shopping day of the year. It's ugly, beautiful consumerism at its finest/most redonkulous.
Stores all over the country are hiring a little extra help to handle the massive influx of people, and that's a little bit of welcome news on this, the first snowy day of the year here in Muskegon.
For those of you not engaged in early morning mortal combat with fellow shoppers to get that underwater fish viewer for your favorite fisherman for 50% off, or a $10 door buster blue ray player, I need your help coming up with ways that an energy efficiency bill can create jobs in 12 months.
The Merkley-Lugar, "cash for caulkers" billis going to do two things:
- It's going to "offer low interest loans to both homeowners and businesses for energy-efficiency upgrades."
- It's going to create jobs in the next 12 months.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) is now advocating that any jobs bill include support for building retrofits to create jobs and reduce energy bills. What he’s got in mind is a variation on his S. 1574: Clean Energy for Homes and Buildings Act of 2009. It’s designed to overcome the main barrier to retrofits involving energy efficiency and small-scale renewables: financing. Most such investments are predictable and profitable over time, but they involve high upfront costs.
-- Article
The bill is going to leverage fancy new loan models to help people retrofit their homes with energy efficient...stuff. Like, for example, windows. Or insulation. Or tankless water heaters. The fancy new loans help people pay for their energy efficient "stuff" using the savings created by said "stuff."
Pretty cool...
In recent years, a number of innovative financing models have emerged to allow consumers access to loans that they can pay off using all or part of the energy bill savings they see as soon as the retrofit is completed. Some cities and states are encouraging property-tax-based financing, where the building owner gets a loan from the local government and repays it through a property tax surcharge. Some utilities (in some cases in partnership with cities or states) are offering on-bill-financing, where the loan is repaid through a surcharge on the utility bill. Some private companies can offer building owners performance savings contracts or, in the case of solar electric systems, leasing arrangements to that the cost is paid off in monthly payments, out of the savings on the utility bill.
But how does it translate into jobs?
I'm going to throw out some ideas, and maybe you can throw some ideas into the comments. The idea here is to create jobs in the next 12 months. Why 12 months? Well...first, because people need work. Second, because if Dems want to avoid greater potential of an election day massacre, Americans need to be less pissed off and have jobs.
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Here are my ideas for the bill...next, you give me yours...
- Frankly, I'd like to see more wood stoves and wood furnaces out there. High efficiency wood stoves that have significantly lower particulate emissions compared to classic open fireplaces and don't dredge up CO2 from millions of years ago. Help folks get into a wood stove, and instantly help local economies: distributors, masons, installers, the folks with wooded lots who sell dead fall as fuel from the side of the road...keep that heating money local.
- Or...get me some geothermal heating / cooling action and reduce my emissions like crazy. This is going to be a lot more skilled labor as I understand it, and might have fewer people on call to fill a sudden demand, though.
- We need to somehow hinge training and education with various products that can be had using a loan. Private companies who employ people with the dual purpose of letting Americans know about the Federal program and helping the company(companies) they work for sell energy efficiency products on a loan.
3.a. Phone banks/information call centers. This is quick job creation and a quick way to jump start public awareness of the program. We don't want the program to fail for lack of public awareness. And thousands of phone bank jobs can be created TODAY with little training. Companies who would benefit can opt to chip in portions of the up front cost, and will benefit from being listed as participating members of the program.
3.b. Offer seminars for the Do It Yourselfers. Some people will never hire somebody else to work on their house no matter how cheap it is. Hire trainers to give seminars and talks on energy efficiency or energy efficiency products at local hardware stores. Again, companies who stand to benefit by selling more products can opt to subsidize the initial costs of these trainers in return for being listed as participating members of the program. You can start hiring trainers Quickly with modest training.
3.c. Stores listed as participating members can have access to helping people set up microloans equal to the energy savings of the products they buy no matter how small: ligthbulbs, hot water pipe foam insulators.
- Train people how to professionally install that insane plastic window insulation film and dispatch them to every elderly or physically disabled person's house in America. You can start that today. Heck. I personally might pay money for that. I hate putting that stuff up.
- Fairly low skilled, instantly available work could easily be found in helping elderly people put their old fashioned storm windows up for the winter.
- Obviously on site home energy auditors would be an important direction that could create jobs right away.
- Guarantee a hardware store a certain increase in profits from the sale of a variety products in exchange for hiring one or two additional people Right Now.
That's what I've got so far...
...what have you got?