Cash For Caulkers: Good Jobs, Better Houses, Happy Planet?

On the day that the US unemployment rate hit its highest level in 26 years, it was encouraging to receive word of a hopeful retrofit program recently pitched to President Obama.

The program, which was developed by a committee of industry experts  and pitched to the President by legendary money man John Doerr of noted Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has been dubbed "Cash for Caulkers." At its heart, the program aims to put construction workers back to work conducting energy retrofits on existing houses. 

Cute name aside, the approach is sound and hopeful. Doerr noted in his brief presentation that 17% of construction workers are currently out of work, and that only about 200,000 home energy retrofits are conducted on American homes annually. "We probably ought to be doing 5 million a year," Doerr said, "Saving the energy that's wasted- about 40% - in 100 million homes."

Among the program's selling points:

• The creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs that would not be out-sourced.
• Creation of an American industry that would be sustainable for the next 20 years.
• A reduction in our dependence/importation of 600 plus billion dollars of oil.

Details of the program released by Efficiency First reveal that it also is designed to resolve some of the short-comings of the stimulus package, which linked incentives specific products, did not cover labor costs, and did not require proof of energy savings.

These are crucial distinctions, not only for our "return from the economic brink" but for the future of this planet and this industry. As one participant at the President's table put it, "We need to make sure that whatever we do to weatherize and retrofit homes actually works...to say not only did we put people to work, we actually held down energy costs, and this is what it's doing for families."  We will watch the progress of this measure closely, with hopes to see it succeed.

Doerr's testimony begins at 26:00, and lasts just a few minutes:

On the day that the US unemployment rate hit its highest level in 26 years, it was encouraging to receive word of a hopeful retrofit program recently pitched to President Obama.

The program, which was developed by a committee of industry experts  and pitched to the President by legendary money man John Doerr of noted Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has been dubbed "Cash for Caulkers." At its heart, the program aims to put construction workers back to work conducting energy retrofits on existing houses. 

Cute name aside, the approach is sound and hopeful. Doerr noted in his brief presentation that 17% of construction workers are currently out of work, and that only about 200,000 home energy retrofits are conducted on American homes annually. "We probably ought to be doing 5 million a year," Doerr said, "Saving the energy that's wasted- about 40% - in 100 million homes."

Among the program's selling points:

• The creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs that would not be out-sourced.
• Creation of an American industry that would be sustainable for the next 20 years.
• A reduction in our dependence/importation of 600 plus billion dollars of oil.

Details of the program released by Efficiency First reveal that it also is designed to resolve some of the short-comings of the stimulus package, which linked incentives specific products, did not cover labor costs, and did not require proof of energy savings.

These are crucial distinctions, not only for our "return from the economic brink" but for the future of this planet and this industry. As one participant at the President's table put it, "We need to make sure that whatever we do to weatherize and retrofit homes actually works...to say not only did we put people to work, we actually held down energy costs, and this is what it's doing for families."  We will watch the progress of this measure closely, with hopes to see it succeed.

Doerr's testimony begins at 26:00, and lasts just a few minutes: