This 1928 home in Albemarle County, Virginia recently
underwent a renovation through the EarthCraft Virginia
existing homes renovation program. After the renovation,
electricity use dropped by 24% and energy costs dropped
by 42%.

Home Energy Magazine is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special May/June issue. We're taking the opportunity to look back at the past several decades of energy policy in America, and look ahead to what may come. Here's a sneak preview of some of what we're thinking.

Alan Meier, Senior Executive Editor, and Steve Greenberg, Technical Editor, among others, lived through the first energy crisis precipitated by the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and its aftermath. They remember the sudden interest in energy efficiency and renewable energy; the proliferation of solar water heaters on the roofs of homes that broke down quickly, had no one trained to fix them, and have become rusted monuments to the best of intentions gone wrong; the sudden and short lived gain in the average car’s fuel efficiency. They also recall some major successes: the huge and lasting increase in appliance efficiency, especially refrigerators; the success of the Energy Star program; and California’s progressive Title 24 building standards.

Alan, in a yet-to-be-published editorial, has been musing on what will happen after the billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) have been spent on building and retrofitting more efficient and sustainable buildings. Will it be the same three steps forward, two steps back pattern that we’ve seen before? Not so, according to Alan, if we:

Steve came up with some powerful images to stimulate our thinking about the future of energy efficiency:

We've been on a ramp with a rather gradual (and usually upward, with notable exceptions) slope. Suddenly the ramp gets so steep it looks like a wall. If we make it to the new, much higher level, what does the terrain look like? Do we go off a cliff, completing a boom and bust cycle the likes of which we've never seen? Or is there a reasonable ramp down to a sustainable level?

I lived through the lines for gasoline, though I couldn’t yet drive. I've observed the resulting interest in miles per gallon instead of horsepower; the return to a horsepower-mentality; and the recent switch back to a concern about miles per gallon. My family had a great experience with our new-fangled heat pump in the early 70s. My Dad, an engineer and all-around handy man, first got me interested in how houses and cars work during that time. I guess I vote for a steep, but not impossible ramp up in efficiency, followed by a less intense, slow and gradual climb that continues for a long time, with sudden jumps due to new, undreamed of (or only just dreamed of) technology. The pressure will come from high energy prices and people starting to feel the real effects of global warming and unhealthy air. I don't think these things will change anytime soon.

The front of Leaf House. Photo credit: The Leaf Community

1. The economic stimulus act provides $5 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program; increases the eligible income level for the program from 150% of poverty level (determined by criteria established by the Office of Management and Budget) to 200% of poverty level; increases the amount of money that can be spent per home from $2,500 to $6,500; and allows weatherization assistance for homes that were weatherized before 1994 (previously, homes weatherized after 1979 could not be "re-weatherized").

2. $4 billion was allocated to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to retrofit public housing, and $510 million to retrofit the homes of Native Americans.

3. The stimulus bill gives $500 million to the Department of Labor to train workers for careers in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

4. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides increased tax credits for homeowners for energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy installations; the act increases the tax credit for energy efficiency improvements from 10% to 30%, and gives a 30% tax credit for the cost of qualified solar energy systems, geothermal heat pumps, small wind turbines, and fuel cell systems.

5. The tax credit for homeowners who install a natural gas refueling system for a natural gas car, a charging system for a plug-in electric or hybrid vehicle, a hydrogen refueling station for a fuel cell car, or another refueling system in their homes is doubled from $1,000 to $2,000. The credit is good through 2010 for most refueling systems and through 2014 for hydrogen refueling systems.

There are many more provisions in the bill that support building energy efficiency, automotive energy efficiency, the manufacture and use of renewable energy systems, and research into (among other things) high performance batteries.

We recently covered in Home Energy Magazine a story from Italy about the Leaf Community. It is a live/work community outside of Rome where they create all the energy they need by taking it from the sun, the wind, and the ground (using geothermal heat pumps). They are doing a lot of research into storing energy, and that is clearly becoming a top priority among scientists. Energy produced from the sun and wind, for example, is intermittent, and sun and wind resources are often far from populations that need clean energy, requiring expensive transmission systems (more overhead wires). At Leaf House, they produce hydrogen using the electricity produced by photovoltaic solar panels, and store the hydrogen in a "chemical battery". The hydrogen can later be reclaimed and used in a fuel cell to create electricity.

Retrofitting homes to be more efficient, healthy, and sustainable is a "three-fer", as President Obama called it in a recent television interview: it saves energy; makes homes more affordable; and creates jobs. And research such as that taking place at Leaf House opens the door to unimagined, elegant solutions to our energy challenges. One thing that the economic stimulus package has already delivered — something that has long been lacking in the energy efficiency and renewable energy community — is hope.

NASCSP is an organization of state-level leaders of weatherization programs and community action agencies. The Department of Energy (DOE) provides funds to the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). Its mission is to make the homes of low-income people more energy efficient, safe, healthy, and affordable. It has a pretty good track record in that for every dollar they spend weatherizing a house, someone saves two dollars, and the planet avoids a few tons of greenhouse gas emissions. And the weatherization community is a pretty diverse group. In the green building world, I have never seen so many women and people of color involved in every facet of the work.

Some of the funds for weatherization work also come through the Low-Income Heating Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP); some through Energy Conservation Block Grants (ECBG); some through Community Service Block Grants (CSBG); the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (ReGGIe) in the Northeast; and other acronyms… I mean organizations. Thank goodness, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) keeps track of all those funds and how they are spent, and these folks are sticklers for details. They know what all the acronyms mean. Under the Obama administration they are gearing up to be even more demanding of transparency and performance.

It's a very exciting time to be in Washington and at the NASCSP conference. The House "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009″ allocates more than $6 billion for weatherizing homes in the United States. The Senate is still debating its version of the bill, but right now they are allocating $2.9 billion for weatherization. President Obama has made a firm commitment to weatherizing 1 million homes a year for the next ten years, and even mentioned "weatherization" several times on television. He calls it a "three for." The program helps people afford to stay in their homes by lowering their energy bills, it creates good jobs with a future, and it moves the nation closer to energy independence. To put things into context, the budget for weatherization in 2008 was about $250 million.

In his 2009 budget sent to congress last February, President Bush allotted $0 to weatherization. That's what people in weatherization work are used to for the past several years – figuring out how to do more for less. Now they are getting ready for a flood of money, and that is not an easy challenge. For the weatherization community, the state agencies, the nonprofit service providers, and the contractors who are fueled by the desire to have everyone live in a safe and affordable home, it means doing the same excellent work they have been doing for decades – just much much more of it. These people are big on quality and will not sacrifice it for numbers. They know they will be judged on measurable results – energy saved per dollars spent.

"It's like we have been swimming upstream for a decade," said a conference participant. "Now we're going white water rafting."

The Bush Administration has recently passed dozens of so-called "midnight regulations" – last-minute rules and amendments. Many of those new laws affect the environment, including a change to the Endangered Species Act that has California environmentalists deeply worried.

Listen to the Last Minute Rules radio report online.

Credit: California High Speed Rail Authority

Starting with California's state-wide propositions, we have Proposition 1A: Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act. The proposed train would zip from San Francisco to LA in a mere two and a half hours, if voters approve a $10 billion bond. QUEST did a TV story on the science and politics of the high-speed rail last year, and updated it in a web-only video for this year's election. Check out High-Speed Rail on the Ballot. And listen to QUEST's radio story, Fast Trains.

Next, Proposition 2: Standards For Confining Farm Animals. If passed, this proposition would require bigger crates for certain farm animals. It is mostly about animal cruelty, but has implications for human health – and California's egg industry. Listen to The California Report's coverage of the pros and cons of Proposition 2.

Proposition 7: Renewable Energy Generation, would require utilities to get 50% of their power from renewable sources. It sounds straightforward, but actually this one is controversial. Things are explained in this QUEST radio story, Big Solar on the Ballot.

Then we have Proposition 10: Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy, which combines funding for solar and wind energy research with consumer incentives to encourage the use of clean fuels. There is controversy, because the proposition gives extra bonus points to some alternative fuels, but not others. Check out the coverage by the California Report.

There are three measures across the Bay Area concerning open space: Measure WW in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, Measure P in Napa county and Measure T in Solano county. Listen to a discussion of these measures with the executive director of The Greenbelt Alliance, in this KQED Radio News story.

And in San Francisco, Proposition H lets voters decide whether the electric utilities should be publicly owned. This would give the city flexibility in terms of obtaining power from renewable energy sources, but it's hard to say how it would affect the price of electricity. Reporter Cy Musiker and Craig Miller, senior editor for KQED's Climate Watch series, debate Prop H in this segment from KQED Radio News.

Figure out your opinions on these science and environment issues – and check KQED's Election 2008 page, for additional election coverage. Then voice your opinions, with your vote, and your comments to this blog!