Council on Environmental Quality Blog

Going Green and Saving Green

Ed. Note: Everyday the White House gets a lot of questions via Twitter. Yesterday, @WhiteHouse was asked: 

Going green is good, but costly, how is the US going to go ‘green’ energy without raising the deficit?

Check out the response from the White House Council on Environmental Quality and follow us on Twitter for the latest news from the White House and opportunities to engage with us.

When President Obama spoke to Americans in his State of the Union Address, he laid out a plan to take responsibility for our deficit by investing in what makes America stronger, and cutting what doesn’t.  And he recognized that to win the future, we must make America the best place on earth to do business and invest in a strong, modern clean energy economy. 

As long as our economy relies on oil, we will pay the price – not just in dollars spent on a finite source of energy, but also in dollars lost in a missed opportunity to become the world’s leading provider of clean energy technology. Instead of being satisfied with the energy resources of our past, we must push ourselves to create the next generation of sustainable, affordable energy solutions. 

Sustainable practices -- like investing in energy efficient technologies -- save money in the long run.  If the U.S. became 20 percent more energy efficient, we would save more than $200 billion each year.  Here are a few cost-saving programs already underway:

• The Better Buildings Initiative: The President’s Better Buildings Initiative which includes new and expanded incentives for building efficiency – would improve commercial building efficiency 20% by 2020 and help reduce energy costs for American business by $40 billion.
• HOMESTAR Program of Rebates Delivered Directly to Consumers: The Administration continues to advocate for the consumer-friendly HOMESTAR program. Like the Cash for Clunkers program, consumers would be eligible for direct HOMESTAR rebates at the point of sale for a variety of energy-saving investments in their homes.
• A Framework for Continued Growth: The “Recovery through Retrofit” initiative led by the Council on Environmental Quality and Vice President’s Middle Class Taskforce identified market-based solutions to help the energy efficiency industry overcome long-standing barriers. These policies will improve access to information about home energy use and to affordable financing, and will also help create a skilled and certified retrofit workforce.

The Federal Government is putting these principles into action in its own operations. By meeting just one of the sustainability targets President Obama has set for Federal agencies, the government will avoid up to $11 billion in energy costs by 2020.  We are also using the Federal government’s purchasing power to support American ingenuity and build the healthy and prosperous country of tomorrow.

Sahar Wali is Communications Director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality

Winning the Clean Energy Future in Communities Across America

The health of our communities and prosperity of our economy are inextricably linked.  From businesses and educators to state and local governments, communities across America are spearheading the innovations that will help us win the future.  President Obama's plan that he highlighted in the 2011 State of the Union Address to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the world through investments in a clean energy economy will create jobs and improve the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. 

CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley tours the Carrier Corp manufacturing plant for high-efficiency chillers in Charlotte, NC

By investing in clean energy sources and developing 21st century clean energy technologies, we are moving to make America stronger, safer and healthier. Over the past few weeks, I saw this American ingenuity and the role our government has in sparking it firsthand.  In Charlotte, N.C., workers at Carrier Corp. are building high-efficiency commercial HVAC systems that lead the global market and surpass energy efficiency standards by 40 percent.  The workers I met are rightly proud of the products they make that help businesses and governments across the U.S. and throughout the world save money by lowering their energy bills.  And they are pretty excited about their role in creating a clean energy economy.

CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley participates in a roundtable discussion with engineering students at the University of North Carolina Charlotte

At the University of North Carolina Charlotte's William States Lee College of Engineering, which received grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), students discussed the projects and work they are doing in energy-efficient and sustainable building systems design.  These students told me about their projects that are focused on tackling real world challenges to save energy and reduce pollution.  Through DoE's Recovery Act investments, we can help ensure that they receive an education second to none.

CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley visits the Green Vehicle Showcase with EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld, Chief Technical Officer for Coulomb Technologies Richard Lowenthal and San Francisco Department of the Environment Director Melanie Nutter (left to right)

And in San Francisco, I joined Mayor Edwin Lee and Bay-Area clean energy technology manufacturers in celebrating the expansion of a cleaner, smarter transportation infrastructure.  With help from investments by the Federal and local governments, the city's Green Vehicle Showcase, which features locally manufactured electric vehicles (EV) and their charging stations, highlights their expanding efforts to grow across the metro area throughout 2011.

Thanks to President Obama's commitment to invest in American schools, communities and, technologies, we're not just investing in factories, or in products.  We're investing in the spark and ingenuity of America's entrepreneurs.  We're investing in the jobs and futures of the American people.  And we're investing in our collective future as the United States of America.