Good morning. I want to thank everyone for being here today. I am particularly happy to be joined by two of my colleagues in the President’s cabinet, Secretary Alphonso Jackson from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Steve Johnson.

We are here today to announce a very significant partnership of our three agencies, along with a number of our respective stakeholders, to save households money while improving our nation’s energy efficiency. So I am happy to announce the formation of the Partnerships for Home Energy Efficiency.

With the Partnerships for Home Energy Efficiency, we are pledging to work together in the furtherance of an ambitious and concrete goal: to help every American household cost-effectively reduce its home energy bills by at least 10 percent over the next decade.

Since we expect the American economy – and the housing market – to continue to grow over the next 10 years, the savings earned by meeting such a goal would be huge.

We are hoping the success of this program annually will save as much as 2 quadrillion BTUs – or quads – of energy, electricity, natural gas, and oil that is used to heat and cool homes and power our appliances. Two quads is about equal to the amount of energy in 90 million tons of coal, or two trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Put another way, two quads is about equal to the amount of residential energy used annually in the states of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico combined.

And the practical effects will be felt in people’s wallets. We are estimating savings in the range of $12 to $15 billion each year, and perhaps even as high as $20 billion. With the average American household’s annual utility bill expected to rise to about $2000 by 2015, a savings of 10 percent or more is significant – it’s clothes for school, or food for dinner, or maybe an extra day of vacation. But 10 percent is just the baseline. We think that existing households can take simple, cost-effective steps to reduce their energy bills by up to 30 percent, for even greater savings for families.

As part of our Partnerships for Home Energy Efficiency campaign, today we are launching a website – http://www.energysavers.gov/ – for consumers to get information on the latest innovations to make their homes more energy efficient. The tips, helpful hints, and useful links found at EnergySavers are just one part of this far-reaching campaign.

We also are going to expand the very successful Energy Star Program that DOE administers with our friends at EPA. The Energy Star sticker on appliances, air conditioners, windows, and lighting products means the product is energy efficient and a smart choice. We are going to extend this program in our partnerships with industry, with homebuilders, and others to increase energy savings across the country.

We are going to continue with our Weatherization Assistance Program. This valuable effort helps thousands of low-income families by installing energy efficiency measures in their homes. This year alone, more than 92,500 low-income homes will be weatherized with DOE funding, reducing low-income families’ energy bills by $729 million over the life of the measures.

We are going to build on HUD’s already-existing program to reduce utility bills in the nation’s affordable housing, which I know Secretary Jackson will speak to in just a moment.

We are going to work with companies, professional associations, and states to develop new energy efficiency services to provide homeowners with high quality home remodeling. As part of this, we are going to promote the availability of energy efficiency refinancing through the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and other organizations.

And DOE’s Climate VISION program will work with the states of Texas, California, New York, and others, as well as HUD and the Department of Agriculture on pilot projects that will test new approaches to transforming the housing market toward increased energy efficiency, which can further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

All of these efforts will take place against a backdrop of continued innovative research into building science, practices, and policies – research that can apply to new homes, as well as to existing models.

Before I turn the microphone over to Secretary Jackson, I want to note that the announcement we are making today – with the introduction of EnergySavers and the joint efforts of DOE, EPA, and HUD and other partners – is taking place at a time when Congress appears poised to pass comprehensive energy legislation for the first time in more than a decade.

The versions of the energy bill that have passed both houses of Congress contain a number of important energy efficiency and conservation provisions, such as residential tax credits. Congress needs to get a bill to the President, so we can take advantage of these provisions. And when that bill becomes law, we will highlight and provide links for these on EnergySavers.

As with our announcement today, Congress seems to recognize the fundamental importance of energy efficiency and conservation, and I am heartened to see that.

At a time when our demand for energy is growing and when our capacity for producing energy is strained, I am often asked where we will get the energy to fuel our economy, to cool and heat our homes, and to power our businesses in the decades ahead. It seems to me that one of the greatest untapped sources of energy we have in this country is the energy we currently waste.

So by making our homes more energy efficient, we can go a long way to ensuring our nation’s future energy security, improving our greenhouse gas intensity and, at the same time, taking some of the sting out of consumers’ utility bills.

This goes for existing homes, which account for large part of this partnership’s focus. And it goes for new homes, too. So let me challenge the homebuilders who are here today to incorporate energy efficiency measures into the units that they build in the future. And I want to challenge the three agencies involved to work with the homebuilders toward a goal that by 2015, at least half of new homes constructed will be built to Energy Star levels or better.

With that, I want to ask Secretary Jackson to say a few words, and after him, Administrator Johnson. Thank you.

Location:
Ronald Reagan Building<br>Washington, DC