Energy Efficiency Loans Can Add to Your Bottom Line – Information and Resources Included

Energy Efficiency Loans Can Add to Your Bottom Line – Information and Resources Included

Utilities, cities, and states often offer businesses 0% or low-interest loans for energy efficiency projects. This is a great way for businesses to save money while decreasing energy usage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions! Read on for loan details, program examples, and resource links.

The Vancouver Convention Centre, a Global Green Icon

The Vancouver Convention Centre, a Global Green Icon

The expansion project of the Vancouver Convention Centre was designed to be a showcase sustainable building and has been designed constructed to meet the LEED Gold Standard in sustainable building design. It features a sweeping green roof that is the 2nd largest in North America.

Huge Growth in Retrofit Buildings Predicted: $10-15 Billion Dollar Market by 2014

The market for green buildings is exploding and the lion’s share of the opportunity exists in retrofits, not new buildings. McGraw-Hill Construction’s latest SmartMarket Report, Green Building Retrofit & Renovation: Rapidly Expanding Market Opportunities Through Existing Buildings, was released at the Green Retrofit Conference in New York recently. The report finds that new buildings represent only 2.5% of the US building market, while retrofitting provides an enormous market opportunity for green builders, owners and building product manufacturers.Currently, green building comprises 5-9% of the retrofit and renovation market activity by value. This equates to a $2-4 billion marketplace for major projects. By 2014, that share is projected to increase by 20-30%, creating a $10-15 billion market for major retrofit projects in only five years.

Its Energy Efficiency, Stupid

The keystone of the green economy is a drastic increase in energy efficiency. Increasing our societies energy efficiency is the single most vital and important thing we need to do in order to have a green economy or in fact any kind of economy at all. It is also vitally important to throttle back the amounts of fossil fuel we burn in order to mitigate and diminish the rapid and potentially catastrophic climate change that is being driven by our fossil fuel habit.

Without much more energy efficient buildings and transportation systems nothing we do will be able to prevent an economic collapse brought about by the inevitable and rapidly approaching decline in the recoverable supplies of all forms of fossil energy. We cannot build out wind, geothermal, biofuel, or solar energy fast enough to sustain our civilization in the face of rapidly shrinking recoverable fossil energy reserves; unless we embark on an urgent and sustained drive to use energy (and other resources) with much higher efficiency.

U.S. Mayors See Big Economic Opportunity in Fighting Climate Change

A survey of 140 mayors from 40 states also highlights concern over potential financial obstacles for infrastructure projects, according to a study sponsored by Siemens for The U.S. Conference of Mayors. A majority of cities (77%) report their infrastructure budget for 2009 has been adversely affected by the global economic crisis. However, nearly two-thirds of all U.S. mayors surveyed believe that fighting climate change with technological innovation represents a “enormous” economic opportunity. Optimizing the infrastructure of cities is considered a major way to address global warming and environmental protection. Mayors of larger cities, in particular, viewed the expansion of public mass transit as a key way to fight climate change.

LEDs, Lighting the Way to Energy Efficiency

Promoting the widespread use of energy efficient lighting is one of the best strategies available to increase our energy efficiency and reduce our carbon footprint. Around 25% of the electricity we consume is consumed to light our homes and buildings. Both LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) and Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL) use far less electricity per lumen (which is a measure of the amount of light produced) than do incandescent bulbs.