House Passes Environmental Bill (You Read That Correctly)

Pigs flying can’t be too far behind.  Here are the details:

The Energy Efficiency Improvement Act, which overwhelmingly passed by a vote of 375-36, is similar to a bipartisan bill that was reintroduced in the Senate last week. The House bill calls for several steps to reduce electricity waste, including:

• Create a “Tenant Star” program, modeled on Energy Star, that would establish best practices for efficiency in commercial tenant spaces and set up a voluntary certification system.

• Require federal agencies to adopt best practices to minimize electricity consumption by information technology, especially data servers.

• Require federally leased buildings without Energy Star labels to benchmark and disclose energy usage data.

It’s a small step and probably the most we can expect out of this Congress, but it’s already more than I was expecting.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.