Question

Identify and discuss specific policy tools (taxes, carbon credits, tax credits, etc.) that would support building retrofitting.

Answer 1

Building retrofitting refers to the upgrading and replacing energy-consuming equipments in buildings. The building retrofitting offers important potential capital investment opportunity and employment among the youngsters. However many of the barriers exist to scaling energy efficiency retrofits in the United States could be attributed to be addressed through enabling local and national policy and regulation. Recent activity in the United States suggests the industry will scale independent of policy change, but we believe that an improved enabling policy environment could dramatically speed this process. Enabling policy and regulation can be broad or targeted to specific market segments or finance models. Mandated efficiency targets, for example, could transform the industry across the board. Legislation that authorizes on-bill recovery for single family retrofits, on the other hand, would enable the development of a particular operational and financial model for a single segment. Both types of policies could play an important role in accelerating market adoption of energy efficiency.

Presently, the best examples of enabling policy and regulation for energy efficiency retrofits in the United States can be found at the local and state level. In New York City, for example, mandatory energy disclosure and benchmarking laws generate demand for retrofits and the NYC Energy Efficiency Corporation was created as a public-private mechanism to finance this demand. A survey of local policy innovations, which is mostly outside of the scope of this paper, should also inform policy going forward.