One Year Later, Obama’s Energy Efficiency Plan Is Stalled

February 3, 2012 | 8:55 AM

By Scott Detrow

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On Feb­ru­ary 3, 2011, Pres­i­dent Obama trav­eled to State Col­lege to announce a new energy effi­ciency pro­gram. He wanted to lower com­mer­cial energy bills by $40 bil­lion, and improve the country’s energy effi­ciency by twenty percent.

A year is a long time. The fact Obama gave a shout-out to for­mer Penn State Pres­i­dent Gra­ham Spanier in the first minute of his speech is a tes­ta­ment to that. But twelve months after the president’s ini­tial announce­ment, the leg­isla­tive por­tion of his energy effi­ciency pol­icy hasn’t advanced at all.

The plan was part of the broad “Win the Future” cam­paign Obama rolled out dur­ing his 2011 State of the Union address. Like he’s been doing the last two weeks,the pres­i­dent trav­eled around the coun­try after last year’s speech to out­line spe­cific details of the poli­cies he had asked Con­gress to pass.

The Penn State visit was focused on a topic Obama admit­ted sounds kind of bor­ing: improv­ing energy effi­ciency. “It may not sound too sexy,” he told the crowd, “But our homes and our busi­nesses con­sume 40 per­cent of the energy we use. …It costs us bil­lions of dol­lars in energy bills. They waste huge amounts of energy.”

• One Year Later, Obama’s Energy Effi­ciency Plan Is StalledStateIm­pact Pennsylvania’s Scott Detrow reportsDown­load

Obama’s plan to lower the num­ber was two-fold:  first, expand tax deduc­tions for com­pa­nies who improve their insu­la­tion, light­ing sys­tems and heat­ing. “What we’re say­ing to peo­ple is if you’re will­ing to make your build­ings more energy-efficient, we’ll pro­vide new tax cred­its and financ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for you to do so,” he said.

Watch Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2011 speech:

The pres­i­dent also wanted to mir­ror the White House’s “Race To The Top” edu­ca­tion pro­gram, and give fed­eral grants to states and cities who strength­ened their effi­ciency stan­dards. “You show us the best ideas to change your game on the ground,” he promised state and local gov­ern­ments, “we’ll show you the money.”

But Pres­i­dent Obama did not show any­one the money. Con­gress never approved the grants, which were part of the Depart­ment of Energy’s bud­get request.

Low­ell Ungar directs pol­icy at the Alliance To Save Energy. He tracked the White House pro­pos­als, and said Con­gress made it clear it wasn’t fund­ing “Race To Green,” when it finally passed the Depart­ment of Energy’s bud­get in Decem­ber. “One of the notes [leg­is­la­tors] put in was that they did not pro­vide fund­ing for a fed­eral pro­gram to essen­tially influ­ence state laws regard­ing com­mer­cial build­ings,” Ungar explained.

Unger is dis­ap­pointed the grants never hap­pened. “A lot of the rules that deter­mine build­ing effi­ciency are set at the state level. By encour­ag­ing states to pay atten­tion to this area and make some reforms, it could have really trans­formed much of the build­ing mar­ket in the United States.”

Con­gress didn’t change the tax codes, either. The deduc­tion cur­rently in place is cum­ber­some, accord­ing to Unger, and dif­fi­cult to apply for. Obama wanted to change the incen­tive to a credit, and expand its size.

Repub­li­can Glenn Thomp­son rep­re­sents State Col­lege in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and attended last year’s speech. He said he’s in favor of improv­ing effi­ciency stan­dards, but doesn’t want to do it through tax incen­tives. “This coun­try is suf­fer­ing under a tax code that is extremely too com­plex,” Thomp­son said. “It is so com­plex that, frankly, the only peo­ple that ben­e­fit from it are those who have enough per­sonal resources to be able to afford an army of tax attor­neys. And they can find all kinds of deductions.”

Thomp­son also opposed “Race to Green,” point­ing out the 2009 fed­eral stim­u­lus pack­age had already funded energy effi­ciency efforts. Accord­ing to the White House, the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act directed $20 bil­lion toward energy effi­ciency efforts.

Since Repub­li­cans took con­trol of the House, most of Pres­i­dent Obama’s leg­isla­tive agenda has ground to a halt. That’s what hap­pened with his energy effi­ciency proposals.

But his “Bet­ter Build­ings” effort isn’t com­pletely dead. In Decem­ber, the pres­i­dent announced he’ll require fed­eral build­ings to make $2 bil­lion worth of energy effi­ciency upgrades. Obama also has the Trea­sury Depart­ment work­ing to write new guide­lines for the tax breaks.

And the White House, work­ing along­side the Clin­ton Global Ini­tia­tive, has received com­mit­ments from pri­vate com­pa­nies, uni­ver­si­ties and other orga­ni­za­tions from across the coun­try to carry out energy effi­ciency over­hauls at their own expense.

The White House framed the Decem­ber announce­ment as part of its “We Can’t Wait” ini­tia­tive – a series of exec­u­tive orders meant to high­light pol­icy areas where Con­gress hasn’t advanced bills the pres­i­dent supports.

Pres­i­dent Obama hasn’t given up on the leg­isla­tive por­tion of his Bet­ter Build­ings plan, though. In fact, he men­tioned it dur­ing this year’s State of the Union. “The eas­i­est way to save money is to waste less energy,” he told Con­gress. “So here’s a pro­posal: help man­u­fac­tur­ers elim­i­nate energy waste in their fac­to­ries and give busi­nesses incen­tives to upgrade their buildings.

Low­ell Ungar – from the Alliance To Save Energy – said he’s still opti­mistic. “Sav­ing energy is kind of a sweet spot, where a lot of dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions and com­pa­nies and politi­cians can come together.

Still, Ungar acknowl­edged it will be pretty tough to get any sort of major bill passed, given the par­ti­san grid­lock in Washington.