Barack Obama in his campaign for "green building"

Sustaining green tide in building a concern
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No matter how busy he is but President Barack Obama still have time to get involved in his campaign on green building.
Ever since he was on the campaign trail, President Barack Obama has touted “green buildings” as a way of cleaning the environment, creating business opportunities, cutting energy consumption and reviving the moribund job market.

Since taking office, Obama has earmarked $5.5 billion to greenify federal buildings throughout the country, $5 billion to weatherize homes owned by low-income families and $3.2 billion to retrofit homes and commercial buildings, as well as other funds for solar paneling, water conservation and, well, you get the picture.

The latest initiative is slated to be launched tomorrow, when Vice President Joe Biden unveils a report on “Recovery through Retrofit,” a new set of proposals aimed at jump-starting the economy through renovating homes and offices with energy-saving technologies and devices.

With unemployment at postwar highs and construction firms still laying off workers, skeptics might ask where all the money has gone.

“Green jobs continue to be a tiny part of the economy,” said Michael Berwick, an employment specialist for the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. “The solar industry, like the wind industry, has not taken off, even with the government subsidies. It could in the future, but not yet.”

But for workers and builders in the green construction industry, the real question is not whether the funding's coming — they're convinced it's on the way — but what will happen after it ends.

Money for green renovation has already begun filtering through the economy, through energy-efficiency programs at courthouses, military bases and federal buildings.

“With the recent hibernation of residential and commercial construction, we've all been focusing on a lot of federal, state and local government projects — and most of them have been legislated to be green,” said Chris Day, vice president of San Francisco's Swinerton construction firm.

Previous projects by Swinerton, which has an office in San Diego, include the North Island Credit Union headquarters and Sunroad Centrum office tower in Kearny Mesa. Both buildings have LEED certifications from the U.S. Green Building Council, signifying their efficient use of energy, water and other resources.

Both of those projects were completed several years ago, when the real-estate market was still hot. Now most of Swinerton's biggest projects are government-funded, such as a $20.6 million NASA research center near Silicon Valley, which aims to be the greenest building in the federal system.

Although most of the stimulus dollars have gone to government facilities, hundreds of millions of dollars for private projects are in the pipeline.

A preliminary report by the California Recovery Task Force early this month shows that the federal stimulus program has allocated $185.8 million to help the state's low-income households weatherize their homes and $314.5 million for energy-efficiency and conservation programs.

But as of Sept. 30, the report said, less than $10 million has been spent, leading to the creation or retention of only 120 or so jobs. The bulk of the funding is expected to start flowing within the next three or four months.

To address the expected demand for workers, the California Clean Energy Workforce Training Program awarded $27 million in federally funded stimulus grants to launch green building and clean energy jobs-training programs, including $1 million to the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District and $700,000 for the San Diego Workforce Partnership.

San Diego State University is already offering certificates in green building and management — one of the first such programs in the nation when it was launched last year. So far, 275 students have enrolled or gone through the program. The real estate department at the University of San Diego is also putting an emphasis on green buildings, as are local unions representing the building trades.

“The impact of these programs is going to be huge,” said Jennifer Badgley, organizer at the San Diego local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

But at a forum on federal stimulus programs last week at the University of California San Diego, builders, union organizers and academics said the real task ahead is to keep the work flowing after the federal funds dry up in a couple years. The government, after all, has been far more willing to engage in energy saving measures than most consumers or businesses have been.

“What it's going to take is a lot of education,” said Devon Hartman, a principal in the HartmanBaldwin construction and design firm in Claremont.

There are tangible economic benefits to turning buildings more green, Hartman said. Just a simple step like weatherizing homes by making doors and windows airtight or adding more insulation often saves so much money in energy costs that it pays for itself in two years, he said.

And it saves money. A Department of Energy study calculates that if U.S. homes used 25 percent less energy — an achievable goal through weatherization — it would save as much energy as taking half the cars off the road.

Nevertheless, even in the best of times it is hard to convince homeowners of the long-term benefits of such technologies. And now, as the country struggles with the recession, it can be even more challenging.

“People have gotten into the habit of selling their homes once every two or three years, so when you tell them that they can make their money back in two years, they don't listen,” said David Shields, co-owner of Kwik-Build Panels, a firm in San Diego that makes insulated home-building materials.

Some of those concerns may be addressed by AB-811, a state law aimed at helping fund environmental retrofitting by allowing consumers to pay for the renovations through low-interest loans attached to their property taxes. As they pay their taxes, they pay down the loans.

But Heather Honea, who teaches business administration at SDSU, said what is needed is a change in consumer attitude, to focus on long-term benefits rather than short-term gains.

“People today are used to the concept that if you want something, you just take out your credit card and buy it today,” she said.


Related Terms: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kearny Mesa, NASA, SDSU, UCSD



What is a green building? Is it a building painted green? Is it a grass hut? This is laughable that the VP said Recovery through Retrofit. Let bulldoze an entire city and really retrofit. If anyone want a perfect example of Recovery through Retrofit I suggest moving to New Orleans.