October 30, 2009

The Honorable Barbara Boxer, Chair
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
410 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

RE: Require Efficiency Investment of at least 1/3 of Allowance Value Given to Electric Utilities

Dear Chairwoman Boxer:

Congratulations on your recent release of the Chairman's Mark of the climate bill. As your Committee moves to mark up the legislation and toward passing the bill out of Committee, we urge you to make a crucial change that is necessary to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, enhance consumer protection, and lower the cost of the climate program.

We are writing to request that the climate bill require an investment in energy efficiency equivalent to at least 1/3 of the value of the total allowance allocation given to electric utilities. Such an efficiency investment will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs retrofitting millions of buildings nationwide, and benefit consumers by lowering electricity costs by billions of dollars, as residential, commercial, and industrial consumers typically save in the range of $2 to $4 for every $1 invested in energy efficiency. It would also help decrease greenhouse gas emissions and thus reduce the market clearing price of carbon.

In light of these tremendous benefits, close to two hundred labor, business, civil rights, community-based, and environmental organizations below support allocating 1/3 of the electric utility allowances toward energy efficiency.

The Chairman's Mark includes a 1/3 efficiency investment requirement for natural gas utilities, which ensures that more than $3 billion per year will be invested in natural gas efficiency. This will yield more than $15 billion in gas efficiency investments by 2020, generating consumer savings of approximately $45 billion, and creating more than 100,000 new jobs. We strongly support this provision.

As you prepare to pass climate legislation out of the EPW Committee, we urge you to include a similar 1/3 efficiency investment requirement for the electric utility allocation, which would:

• Generate $100 billion in electric efficiency investments;
• Create more than 900,000 new construction, energy service, and building maintenance and operations jobs by 2020, and many more additional jobs at plants that supply these sectors (based on analysis by Green Economy, 2009), and;
• Reduce consumers' energy bills by $300 billion.

We thank you for your assistance on this important issue, and we look forward to working together to pass climate legislation that will create new clean energy jobs across the country, protect consumers, and strengthen our economy.

Sincerely,

National Organizations

For a complete list of signing organizations please download the letter as a PDF.

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