Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm virtually addressed the winners of DOE’s 2021 Housing Innovation Awards at the Energy & Environmental Building Alliance’s High-Performance Home Summit on Tuesday, September 14, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. Housing Innovation Awards are the nation’s highest honors builders can receive for constructing Zero Energy Ready Homes.
Text Version of the Video
Host at lectern at EEBA Summit:
I have never in my life had an honor as much as this one. It's my pleasure to introduce the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, Jennifer M. Granholm. Jennifer M. Granholm was sworn in as 16th Secretary of Energy on February 25, 2021, becoming just the second woman to lead the U.S. Department of Energy. Secretary Granholm will lead the Department in helping America achieve President Biden's goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, by advancing cutting-edge clean energy technologies, creating millions of good-paying, union, clean energy jobs, and building an equitable and clean energy future. Secretary Granholm also oversees the DOE's core missions of promoting American leadership in scientific discovery, maintaining the nuclear deterrent, and reducing nuclear danger and remediating the environmental harms caused by legacy defense programs. Secretary Granholm, it's my honor to welcome you to the Housing Innovation Awards at the EEBA summit.
Secretary Granholm, appearing virtually:
Well, thank-you so much. I feel bad for Martha Rose. I didn't mean to bump her. But I really am honored. Thank-you so much. On behalf of the Department of Energy, I really want to thank EEBA. I mean, you guys have been amazing, leading the country's push into more efficient buildings and homes using building science for almost, what, four decades, which is awesome. So I know your partnership through the years with the Department of Energy has opened doors to so much of what we've accomplished in the energy-efficiency space, especially through our Building America program. So thank-you for that. I’m so pleased you're hosting our annual Zero Energy Ready Home Housing Innovation Awards. Thank-you so much for that. I want to – I do want to offer my congratulations to Martha Rose as well as everybody who have already been announced.
So today I am really here to tell you that we not only remain committed to advancing zero emissions and high-performance and high-quality homes, but that commitment is stronger than ever. And it is because President Biden is just determined to execute the boldest climate agenda in our nation's history. As was mentioned, we have set ambitious goals to get us on an irreversible path to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 and a net-zero economy by 2050.
And the fact is that path as you know runs right through the stock of our 129 million residential and commercial buildings. Right now, you know this, our buildings use roughly 40 percent of the nation's energy and 75 percent of its electricity and even greater share of peak electricity demand. And buildings do account for a little over a third of our carbon emissions. So since 30 percent of the energy that our buildings consume is wasted, we're also wasting a ridiculous amount of money. We pay over 100 billion dollars a year on energy that we don't even use, obviously which needlessly dirties our air and worsens the climate crisis in the process. And you and I both know it doesn't have to be this way. So through what y'all are doing with energy-efficiency improvements, we can eliminate that waste, we can lower our bills, we can reduce pollution, we can make people healthier, we create tens of thousands of jobs. What's not to love?
Let me take a moment here to emphasize just how profound the benefits are, especially I really want to emphasize for lower-income communities and disproportionately communities of color. Americans below the poverty line, the federal poverty line, shoulder an energy burden that can be up to 30 percent. Many of you know this. That's 30 percent of their paycheck that cannot go to food or medicine or child care. And lowering that burden means happier, healthier families. So improving energy efficiency is not just one of the simplest things we can do to make progress toward our emissions reductions goals, it's one of the simplest things we can do to build a more equitable future. And that's why DOE is working through our Building Technologies Office. It's one of the reasons why, to lower costs and to raise the performance of energy efficiency, efficient homes. We have a number of programs that many of you have been working with us on, certainly EEBA. Our Advanced Building Construction initiative is reinventing the ABCs of building, unlocking higher home performance levels at even lower costs, well helping you build better and faster. Then our Grid Interactive Efficient Buildings initiative is advancing smart grid technologies that are not only going to help homes use less energy and emit less carbons, going to turn these homes into flexible clean energy resources, put more money into the pockets of your future homeowners. Our Energy Emissions and Equity initiative is all about researching and developing and deploying clean heating and cooling systems that'll make your homes even cleaner and more optimized than ever before. And of course our Zero Energy Ready Home program is all about setting these high standards for energy savings and indoor air quality protections and sustainable building materials and construction durability and all that.
So huge, but I know that we need your help to make zero-energy homes the new norm. And your partnership with team zero, it demonstrates your commitment to a zero-emissions home market. And the team zero inventory tells us that that market is growing quickly. And so with the support that you can provide to Zero Energy Ready Home builders from, you know, sharing best practices to aiding and training, we can supercharge that growth. So let's keep working together to figure out how we can move the home building industry toward zero emissions, where they'll take steps voluntarily, where they need incentives, where they'll have pressure points that make sense. We want to know where the best policy levers are to make this a reality, because let me tell you, energy efficiency is really having a moment right now in Washington, because both the Senate and the House of Representatives are working on a major tax credit for builders working on projects that meet our standards for Zero Energy Ready Homes. You're probably all aware of that. As part of the Build Back Better agenda, President Biden has proposed billions in block grants and tax credits for state and tribal and local governments that are seeking to construct new and efficient buildings. The bipartisan infrastructure deal includes 3.5 billion dollars for our Weatherization Assistance Program, which obviously employs thousands of people, helping households increase energy efficiency. So there is just a huge recognition that the built environment has to be addressed. And the policy levers can really make a difference. So the potential here is massive. I think you'll agree we cannot afford to miss it. So let's make sure that we don't. And so thank-you so much, Aaron, and everybody. Thank-you, EEBA, for your work to make America more energy efficient; thank-you for your past, your present, your future partnership. And to the winners of our Housing Innovation Awards from around the country, congratulations once again. So enjoy the rest of the summit. Thank-you for letting me dip in.