The White House has unveiled new initiatives of the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Veteran Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development that aim to support climate resilience and water and energy efficiency.Christine Harada of the Council on Environmental Quality and Ali Zaidi from the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a blog post published Wednesday that USDA, VA and HUD have begun to urge consumers to use WaterSense-labeled products.
The Environmental Protection Agency‘s WaterSense program has helped save 1.5 trillion gallons of water, $33 billion in water bills and 78 metric tons of carbon pollution through a 10-year period, the post stated.
DOE will release an analysis in an effort to show how strong energy codes can help homeowners, building owners and tenants to save approximately $100 billion on energy bills and reduce carbon emissions by more than 800 million metric tons through the next 50 years, Harada and Zaidi said.
HUD will collect data on the energy and water performance of 2.2 million homes assisted or insured by HUD to obtain energy and water efficiency data that could help benchmark property performance, address utility costs and streamline HUD program delivery.
HUD, USDA and the VA have provided a guidance to lenders, borrowers and stakeholders to demonstrate the impact of higher standards on efforts to strengthen homes and conserve energy and water, Harada and Zaidi noted.
The White House has set a new goal under the federal performance contracting challenge that seeks to gain $2 billion in additional energy performance contracts in the next 3 years and achieve 2 billion gallons of water savings.
Federal agencies have awarded more than $3.5 billion in energy efficiency performance contracts through the challenge and are on track to attain the $4 billion goal by the end of 2016, the post stated.
