Ask the Expert: Bracken Hendricks on the HOME STAR Program

What is the HOME STAR program?

The Center for American Progress has called for an ambitious program to retrofit 40 percent of American homes and small commercial office buildings. Doing that would create 625,00 jobs sustained over a decade and drive half a trillion dollars of new investment into the American economy. The HOME STAR program is an ambitious effort to give incentives and rebates to homeowners to make energy-saving investments today in reducing the energy use and reducing the energy bills that they have to pay every month. By investing strategically in improving the energy efficiency of America's homes and offices through a program like a rebate to American homeowners to improve residential energy efficiency, we can jumpstart an industry, we can get banks lending money again, and we can rebuild America.

What are the benefits of a HOME STAR program?

HOME STAR is designed really with three different core elements that have to be part of any program. The first is called the silver track. It's kind of like the cash for clunkers. In fact, some people have called it "cash for caulkers." And this silver star program would give homeowners incentives to do simple things: one-off investments in a new water heater, an advanced furnace. These things would be bought, and the homeowner would receive a rebate to reimburse them for up to $1,000 for every investment that they make. But they would have to pay for 50 percent of it, so they'll have an investment in it.

The gold star track is a step further toward the energy efficiency industry that we need in the future. For gold star, homeowners would first conduct an energy audit that would look at the current energy use in the building. And then they would have an incentive to reduce energy use by at minimum 20 percent in the whole home--incidentally, reducing the energy bill by 20 percent and carbon emissions by 20 percent at the same time. And this will cause homeowners to invest in the most cost effective technologies. Often these are the simplest and most labor intensive investments, like air ceiling. And this will put people right back to work immediately.

The coalition that's formed around, and that the Center for American Progress has been deeply engaged in, is calling for a rigorous program of quality assurance. And this will involve labor unions in doing quality work and high-quality training. It will involve the financial industry in making sure that energy efficiency retrofits are done to the highest standards. And it will create a standards-based industry in the future so that when people buy an energy-efficient retrofit, they know that they'll be really saving money, really saving energy, and really cutting carbon. And that kind of quality assurance is what's really going to make a meaningful industry as we go into the future.

How would the HOME STAR program help create jobs?

The HOME STAR program puts American workers back to work today. As homeowners start to demand new investments in their homes and offices, those investments are going to create demand for advanced building materials and importantly for skilled labor. This new investment is going to take some of the millions of construction workers who are currently sitting on the sidelines at a time when the housing industry is in an incredible slump, and it's going to create new demand for construction--not building new homes, but retrofitting the homes for energy performance. It also has important impacts for manufacturing. At a time when inventories are high, this will clear the inventories for manufactured goods and advanced building materials, and start assembly lines rolling again. HOME STAR is a good investment in American workers and construction, and in the hard hit manufacturing industries.