The Racine Energy Efficiency Project (REEP) is the first PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) program in the Midwest. It launched March 13 and is already reviewing dozens of applications from homeowners.

The program will provide upfront financing and technical assistance to homeowners who want to weatherize or update appliances and toilets in their houses. Energy and water audits must demonstrate that the upgrades are likely to save enough money to cover monthly payments for the loans.

The innovation in PACE programs like REEP is that repayment is on a city-issued bill. If not paid, the obligation can be billed as property tax and, in cases of default, collected through a tax sale. This eliminates the need to do credit checks or issue a mortgage lien, and it allows payments to transfer to new owners, who will receive the energy saving benefits of the projects.

Recently launched projects in California and New York have shown that these advantages are appealing to homeowners, who don’t have to worry, for example, that they might move to another house before reaching the payback period of an energy improvement.

The project is capitalized at nearly $500,000 – not enough to create many new jobs right away. But unlike subsidy programs, PACE programs recapture their outlays, so REEP will continue and can be scaled up with additional capital. To insure that as it grows new jobs are good jobs, the program requires contractors to be local and to meet a wage floor, initially $12 per hour. A related bill in the state legislature would go further and require that PACE-supported jobs pay the prevailing wage.

The project was proposed and designed by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a member of Wisconsin Apollo’s steering committee.

– The above post was contributed by Eric Sundquist, a senior associate at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, which convenes the Wisconsin Apollo Alliance.

Though the pace of federal action on climate and clean energy issues continues to lag, states across the nation are keeping up the momentum with strong legislation on a diversity of clean energy fronts.

Colorado topped the list this week by adopting a renewable energy standard (RES) that requires 30 percent of the state’s energy to come from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2020. Colorado’s RES, which also promotes rooftop solar by requiring three percent of the renewable energy to be acquired through distributed generation, is among the strongest in the nation.

“I salute the dedication and commitment of all lawmakers who support the expanded use of renewable resources and cleaner-burning natural gas,” said Colorado Governor Bill Ritter in an op-ed that ran on Sunday in The Pueblo Chieftain. “The energy of our future generations will be cleaner and more sustainable because of their vision and their leadership. Colorado’s workforce will usher in a new era of economic opportunity to compete in and be a leader in a fast-changing world.”

Not only will the Colorado RES create strong demand for renewable energy, it also includes several provisions that will ensure that clean energy jobs are good jobs. One provision requires  a certain ratio of workers on solar installation projects be certified solar installers. According to Charlie Montgomery of the Colorado Environmental Coalition, who is also active with the Colorado Apollo Alliance, community colleges and apprenticeship programs in the state will prepare workers to take the certification test available through the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP). Certified workers bring a high level of competency to their work and can usually demand higher pay than uncertified workers.

 “This new law will provide safe, quality photovoltaic installations and create green careers for Colorado’s working families,” said Mary Broderick, renewable energy and marketing agent with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 68, which will help train a new generation of solar installers.

The bill also requires Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to consider job quality and community economic impacts when it considers proposals to build new electricity resources. Whereas in the past, the PUC was required to analyze a proposed project’s cost effectiveness, now the PUC must also consider such factors as the project’s ratio of in-state workers to out-of-state workers; the availability of long-term career opportunities; and the wages, health care and pension benefits being provided by the utility or company proposing the project.

Click here to read the bill.

“By working together, labor and the environmental community have proven that we can build a new cleaner energy economy and ensure that working families thrive at the same time,”  said Carmen Rhodes, executive director of FRESC, the organization that convenes the Colorado Apollo Alliance.

By: Ron Ruggiero

While in Boston yesterday to promote our new report An Industry at a Crossroads:  Energy Efficiency Employment in Massachusetts (co-authored with our Massachusetts Affiliate), I learned some startling facts from a co-presenter, Andrew Lum (Director, Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University).

In a recent report that he wrote, he makes a compelling case that the Great Recession has really been another Great Depression for blue-collar workers.  The numbers are striking:

• Of the 8 million jobs that we have lost in the United States since the economic crisis, two-thirds have been lost in the blue-collar sector.  In contrast, the Professional/Managerial class of the workforce has lost zero jobs during this time.
• While the national unemployment rate hovers at 10%, for blue-collar workers it is 17%.
• It gets worse when you count underemployment, which includes both unemployed workers and those working part-time but looking for full-time work.  Blue-collar underemployment stands at 33%.  This is worse than it was during the Great Depression.
• The economic dislocation afflicting blue-collar workers is largely permanent: 70% of unemployed blue-collar workers in recent months report that they were either permanently laid off from their jobs or had held a tempoary job that ended with no prospects of recall.  

When taken together with the wage stagnation that has affliced most American workers for the past 30 years, you end up with an urgent need to revitalize the economic opportunities for all workers, but especially those in the blue-collar sector.

Fortunately, the clean energy economy offers at least some important answers to this urgent need.  It is well documented that most green jobs will be in the blue-collar sector.  Building a High Road Energy Efficiency economy–as called for in the report released yesterday–can re-employ many unemployed construction workers, for example.  Passage of the IMPACT Act can begin the long process of revitalizing our manufacturing sector–with a focus on manufacturing the equipment and parts needs to build a clean energy economy.  The United States committing itself to a long-term investment in transitioning to a clean energy economy, as called for in the New Apollo Program, would create over 5 million jobs–most of which would be filled by blue-collar workers. 

On Thursday, March 4th, the Apollo Alliance and Center for American Progress (CAP) co-sponsored a conference in Washington, D.C. that brought together leading policymakers, academics, business and labor leaders, and other experts to discuss what policies will support the United States in becoming not only a consumer of clean-energy technologies but also a leading producer of them.

The conference, Picking a Winner: How to Make the U.S. a Leader in the Clean Energy Economy, was held amid growing concerns about clean-energy jobs—particularly manufacturing jobs—going overseas rather than being located in the United States. It covered the diversity of policies that will need to be implemented for the U.S. to regain its competitiveness in the global clean energy economy.

Click here to watch videos of the entire conference or particular conference sessions. You can also check out photos of the conference on Flickr.

Clean energy manufacturing was a hot topic at the conference. During her keynote address, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) said, “For too long our strategy has been to design, to innovate on new technologies, but not to worry about where it’s made. … Well, it does matter where it’s made, if you care about the American economy, and if you care about the middle class, and if you care about jobs.”

At the end of the day, Jared Bernstein, chief economist and economic policy advisor to Vice President Joseph Biden, closed the conference by emphasizing the Obama administration’s commitment to strengthening the U.S. manufacturing sector—especially through supports for the domestic manufacture of clean energy technologies. “I’m here today to amplify a simple message, which is that manufacturing matters,” Bernstein said. “As a member of the Obama administration, I can most emphatically tell you it matters because this president has a vision of seeding new industries that will establish America as a leader in the clean energy economy of the 21st century … and most importantly he’s taking steps to make that vision a reality. This is not just talk.”

Other conference speakers, including Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA); John Podesta, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress; Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff of the AFL-CIO; Kathleen McGinty, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection; and Phil Angelides, chairman of the Apollo Alliance, discussed the trade, energy, industrial and innovation policies that the U.S. needs to implement if it is going to become a leader of the global clean energy economy.

Dr. Bill Spriggs, assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, kicked off a discussion of workforce policies by talking about the Department of Labor’s green jobs training grant program. “We wanted to make sure that they [the training programs] were targeting unemployed individuals; that they were going to help lift those who were more difficult to lift; that they had some outreach to those who had some known barrier to employment, either drop outs or people with a criminal record or some other disadvantage because they lived in a high poverty area,” Spriggs said. “We came up with a set of grantees that I think ended up looking inclusive, looking like the American workforce, looking with the diversity that the Secretary [of Labor] can say, these are gonna be good jobs for everybody.”

Watch the conference video. There’s also a video available at the Wonk Room of an interview with U.S. Representative Jay Inslee just before his conference keynote speech.