Senate Energy Efficiency Bill

Please contact your Congressman and ask them to support this bill.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has introduced comprehensive energy efficiency legislation that includes one of the AIA’s three major priorities from Grassroots 2007: energy efficient federal buildings.

Bingaman’s legislation, the Energy Efficiency Promotion Act of 2007 (S. 1115), includes a provision that requires all new and extensively renovated federal buildings to use significantly less fossil fuel-generated energy than a similar building consumed in 2003. This provision reflects the AIA-recommended reduction targets for fossil fuel-generated energy use in new and renovated buildings, which, if adopted, would result in carbon neutral buildings by 2030.

The AIA Government Advocacy team has held numerous meetings with Energy and Natural Resources Committee staff, and AIA 2007 President RK Stewart, FAIA, testified before the Committee in February. The Bingaman bill already has wide bipartisan support; cosponsors include committee ranking Republican Sen. Pete Domenici (NM), and Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Larry Craig (R-ID). The committee is holding hearings on this legislation this week. AIA Government Advocacy staff is working with a number of members of the House of Representatives to introduce similar legislation there.

Tom Wolfe, AIA senior director, AIA Federal Affairs, says, “It is great to see Senators Bingaman and Domenici heed the recommendations of AIA New Mexico members during their Grassroots visits and show that the federal government can demonstrate the reality of carbon-neutral buildings by 2030. We are pleased that the Energy Committee has included fossil fuel-generated energy reduction targets, building off the language Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) introduced in her stand-alone bill on March 29, in their omnibus energy efficiency legislation.”