Thoughts on a Federal Government Stimulus Package for Buildings

Residential buildings account for 22% of U.S. carbon emissions and there is widespread consensus that these carbon emissions can only be reduced if buildings become both more efficient and switch all of their fuel sources to electricity. We have developed an outline for an economic recovery package that would support energy retrofits for the 84 million detached single-family homes in the U.S. The goal of the program is to raise the nationwide retrofitting rate to 4% by 2030 so that all single-family homes will be retrofitted by 2050. It is assumed that market forces will self-sustain this 4% retrofitting rate after the program phases out. These retrofits, coupled with a decarbonizing power grid, would cut carbon emissions from U.S. residential homes up to 85% by 2050, leading to up to 11.5 billion tons of CO2 reductions and creating up to 265,000 long term clean tech jobs distributed across the nation. Estimated program costs would be up to $240 billion over ten years.