WASHINGTON -- More than 114,000 new jobs, many which would come from the hard-hit construction industry, would be created through the Better Buildings Initiative, a White House plan to make existing commercial and multifamily buildings more energy efficient (according to a new analysis recently released by The Real Estate Roundtable, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.) This key initiative, announced by President Obama in February, combines financial and other incentives to improve energy efficiency in the nation’s commercial and multifamily buildings stock.
The biggest job driver in the Better Buildings Initiative, which accounts for more than 77,000 of the new jobs, is a redesigned tax deduction for energy efficiency upgrades of buildings. The joint analysis also shows how the initiative would have a rippling effect throughout the economy to generate more manufacturing, production, and service jobs – and demonstrating how public funds can leverage significant private investments to expand the benefits to the economy.
"This Obama Initiative works for our economy in two important ways: it helps create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs while making us more energy efficient," says The Roundtable’s CEO and President, Jeffrey D. DeBoer. "Unemployment in the construction sector continues to hover above 16 percent. Lending is still difficult to come by in many markets, so financial incentives like these proposed by the White House will leverage private investment to help propel our cities and suburbs forward into a new energy economy."
"The Better Buildings Initiative will achieve multiple benefits with an amplifying effect - first and foremost, the initiative will create green jobs," says Roger Platt, senior vice president of global policy & law with the U.S. Green Building Council. "This program will also lower energy consumption, reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and allow America to retain its competitive edge in the international marketplace as a leader in constructing, retrofitting and operating high-performing buildings."
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), The Real Estate Roundtable (RER), and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), retained the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to conduct the analysis, which can be viewed here.
For more information on the PERI analysis and its figures on jobs creation from the White House’s Better Buildings Initiative, visit the http://usgbcblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-report-better-buildings-new-jobs.html.