Below is the text version of the video of Secretary Jennifer Granholm's remarks at the Advanced Building Construction Summit in April 2021. Watch the video.
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Thank-you, David, and hello, everybody. Welcome to the first-ever Advanced Building Construction Summit. We are convening not a day too soon because we have our work cut out for us. As you probably saw last week, or you may have seen, President Biden is dead-serious about executing the boldest climate agenda in our nation's history and getting us on an irreversible path to a net zero carbon economy by 2050. And that path of course runs right through our building stock. 125 million homes, businesses, schools, and more than that currently, account for about 40 percent of the nation's energy use. And that's a whopping 75 percent of the electricity that we consume, over a third of our carbon emissions.
So most of these buildings were constructed as you all know decades ago, and they weren't built to handle today's energy demands, let alone longer dry spells or fiercer cold snaps or any other extreme weather events that are brought on by the climate crisis. So you know, what's more, they're actually wasting people's hard-earned money on sky-high utility bills to the tune of 100 billion dollars a year wasted. So to meet our 21st century challenges, we need 21st century solutions. And that's what our ABC initiative is all about. By marrying high-tech manufacturing methods with low-carbon materials and energy-efficient systems, we're setting a standard for lean, clean, green buildings. These solutions can be applied up and down the supply chain. They can be applied in design, construction, installation, whether that's for brand new buildings or zero energy renovations. ABC methods like modular construction and prefabrication, they're taking the building world by storm because the productivity benefits are so enormous. As they say in hockey, you have to skate to where the puck is going, not to where the puck is. But right now, only a tiny fraction -- about three percent -- of our nation's construction sector is taking advantage of these efficiencies. So instead of having these high-efficiency buildings constructed here, we see things like American hotel companies shipping them in from overseas. That is crazy. There's nothing efficient or sustainable about shipping in these buildings. We got to get in the game. We have to make ABC magic happen right here at home. And that's where the ABC Collaborative comes in.
We have brought this group together, supply and demand actors alike, because I know you see that there are unmissable opportunities here for America. The opportunity, for example, to create hundreds of thousands of jobs for our people in design and construction, installation, sales, operations, and more, with good pay and good benefits for all. We have the opportunity to combat our affordable housing crisis with high-performance, resilient, energy-efficient solutions. We have the opportunity to be part of the rebirth of American manufacturing. I am so excited that some of you are already making this a reality. Companies like Factory OS, you are training workers including formerly incarcerated individuals to build these modular multifamily buildings and build them more efficiently. The city of Milwaukee, for example, has plans to bring in a local manufacturer to develop highly efficient, low-carbon, affordable homes using ABC solutions. The state of New York is getting building owners to commit to retrofitting existing multifamily buildings with the goal of making them zero energy. You're all bringing ABC solutions to life in neighborhoods all across America.
But in order to achieve a net zero building stock by 2050 we have to move much, much faster and at a much larger scale. This is only going to be possible -- it's only going to be possible to move this fast and at that kind of scale with the American jobs plan that President Biden has proposed. That plan is going to invest a total of 400 billion dollars in American manufacturing and workforce development. It's going to give ABC businesses access to world-class facilities and equipment and skilled labor in every pocket of the country. The American jobs plan will invest 180 billion dollars more in research and development, and that will help our national labs and industry move even faster to develop low-carbon building materials and zero energy construction and retrofit solutions. That American jobs plan will also invest another 213 billion dollars in efforts to produce and preserve and retrofit more than 2 million American homes, which if we're smart will spread ABC methods throughout the country. That's a lot of investment.
I'm so proud to note that we are going to target these investments to create more opportunities for people of color, for women, for communities that have gone unseen for far too long. Together we can lower emissions while increasing the quality of our homes and our workplaces. We have spent almost 90 percent of our lives in these buildings -- why shouldn't they be more comfortable? Why shouldn't they be more efficient or resilient or lighter on people's wallets? And if you agree, and I'm thinking you probably do, we need to do two things. One is that we need to get the American jobs plan to President Biden's desk. So if you like what you just heard, make sure people know it, please. And second, we need you, if you would, to go even bigger with your ABC ambitions, to tell your fellow manufacturers, to tell your fellow suppliers, developers, building owners, everyone you know in this space, to engage with the ABC Collaborative and take on this challenge with us. Because we all know this is the future of this industry. So let's make this first-ever ABC Summit the moment when we committed to leading it. Thank-you, and now I'll hand it back over to Martha Campbell from the Rocky Mountain Institute to tell you more about the ABC Collaborative.