Enigin Update - Obama's Plan to save Businesses $40 Billion a Year
U.S. PRESIDENT Obama is following through on his State of the Union address and is getting serious about energy efficiency.
He is driving his Better Buildings Initiative, which developed out of his "Better Buildings" program within the Department of Energy, by rolling out three new targets yesterday: improve energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2020, save businesses $40 billion per year in energy costs, reform outdated policies and encourage the private sector to have a greater involvement in energy saving implementation.
Obama made the announcement at the Energy Innovation Hub of State College, in Pennsylvannia. The plan involves tax incentives, commercial retrofitting financing opportunities, competitive grants for green practices and increased training on energy auditing and building operations.
"This initiative has the potential to really unlock a large amount of investment, some of which is sitting on the sidelines right now ... and create jobs at a time when that has to be our central focus," said a senior administration official, according to Reuters.
The incentives include: more lucrative tax breaks to blunt the cost, easier access to loans to pay for upgrades and a new competitive grant program to encourage state and local governments to upgrade their standards.
In addition, Mr. Obama will ask chief executives and university presidents to "make their organisations leaders in saving energy," the White House said.
Enigin Distributors across the United States are already helping many businesses, universities and colleges to save substantially on energy bills through installing energy saving technology from Enigin. Whether it is upgrading, retrofitting or even new construction Enigin Distributors can help to achieve energy efficiency targets.
- Achieve a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency by 2020: Under the President’s plan, by 2020, we will make commercial building space in the United States 20 percent more energy efficient through cost-effective upgrades.
- Reduce companies’ and business owners’ energy bills by about $40 billion per year: By making buildings more energy efficient we will save business owners money by reducing their energy bills by about $40 billion at today’s prices. That money that can be put to better use hiring more workers, inventing new products, and creating shareholder value.
- Save energy by reforming outdated incentives and challenging the private sector to act: The President is calling for an aggressive reform of existing tax and other incentives for commercial building retrofits and proposing a new competitive grant program. In turn, he is asking corporate leaders to commit to making progress toward his energy goals.
