“Going Green” was the buzz phrase in 2008 but this year brings in new terms and ideas focused on “energy efficiency” and “retrofits”. President Obama is pushing a large stimulus package designed to improve the energy efficiency of existing building and homes. Obama wants “to modernize 75 percent of federal buildings and improve energy efficiency in 2 million homes to save consumers billions of dollars on energy bills.”
Government officials see green retrofitting as a way to create jobs and avoid the need to build new power plants. Obama’s economic stimulus plan includes incentives and grants for retrofitting homes.
US Senator Patty Murray of Washington chaired a committee focused on the need to train workers with the skills needed to fill jobs in the emerging green economy. An estimated $500 million is to be spent in competitive grants for green job worker training secured from the Economic Recovery Act.
Sustainable Spaces, a company based in San Francisco, is a licensed general and solar contractor and provides home testing and building performance retrofitting for existing homes to create environments that are comfortable, healthy, and energy efficient. The company has performed more than 400 home retrofits in the bay area since 2004.
Studley, the market leaders for green building in San Francisco said that the few buildings that have undergone green retrofits are 100% leased.
The popularity of retrofitting has increased due to the current building stock slowdown in new building project developments. There are also warnings of a construction slowdown, due in part to tightened lending options. Also, tenants are demanding greener buildings so owners look to retrofitting as a way to offer more green building options.
In New York City, the latest landmark to go green is the Empire State Building, following Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and the former Sears Tower, all of which have enacted green programs earlier this year. The program calls for $20 million investment that will potentially decrease the building’s energy use by an estimated 38 percent thus reducing energy costs by $4.4 million annually. Over the next 15 years, the program is also aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 105,000 metric tons.
An issue facing the green home retrofit market is that it can be seen as a luxury for higher-end home owners. Yes your energy bill will go down, eventually, but it could be hard to convince a family with a variety of bills to pay to invest the greening of their home that would potentially save them money in the future.
According to the San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association, forty-five percent of the region’s green building and design firms are located in the city of San Francisco. The green building industry is an important economic development opportunity due to the high number of quality jobs in design, engineering, construction, and building maintenance it can create. There is a great demand for retrofitting buildings to achieve greater energy efficiency, and many cities are seeking ways to do this block by block instead of building by building. Competition for this market segment will be substantial, but the demand will be very large given that there are several hundred thousand buildings in the city.