School construction bonds

Washington — The U.S. Department of Treasury and the Department of Education today announced $11 billion in allocation authority to issue qualified school construction bonds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). Qualified school construction bonds can be used to finance the construction, rehabilitation or repair of a public school facility or for the acquisition of land where a school will be built. The full list of allocations by state can be found here.

Opinion article: Green School Buildings

[From the Commonwealth Foundation] Yesterday the House passed Rep. Drucker's bill to exclude any costs associated with making a school building LEED certified from a possible taxpayer referendum.

Committee staff reported the department said there is a dollar amount threshold for referendums and green building costs can be excluded from that in order to avoid a referendum. Staff said, according to the department, if there is a referendum anyway, all projects will be included in the ballot question, including green construction. (PLS subscription)

With the cost of school construction and debt spending on the rise this bill could have wide implications. As noted in Nate Benefield's testimony on education spending:

Construction and debt spending grew 137% from 1996-97 to 2007-08, compared with 66% growth in instructional spending.

In committee, legislators debated whether green construction is more expensive and Rep. Drucker indicated responded the upfront costs are but the long-term costs are "significantly less". And Rep. Clymer hit the nail on the head when he asked why the exemption is needed if green technology is accepted by the taxpayers.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is a new agency of the Department of Energy. ARPA-E was authorized by the America COMPETES Act (PL 110-69) and charged with the mission to fund projects that will develop transformational technologies that reduce Americas dependence on foreign energy imports; reduce U.S. energy related emissions, including greenhouse gases; improve energy efficiency across all sectors of the U.S. economy; and ensure that the United States maintains its leadership in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies. Initially funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (PL 111-5), ARPA-E aims to support the development of high risk/high payoff applied science and technology innovations that will have a positive disruptive impact on the energy landscape.

Buildings consume 40 percent of the primary energy in the United States, and account for 72 percent of the nation's electricity use and 55 percent of the nation's natural gas use. The objective of this funding opportunity announcement is to develop energy efficient cooling technologies/air conditioners (AC) for buildings to reduce GHG emissions from: (a) primary energy consumption due to space cooling; and (b) refrigerants used vapor compression systems. ARPA-E seeks innovative research and development approaches to increase energy efficiency and reduce emissions due to cooling of buildings by: (i) development of cooling systems that use refrigerants with low global warming potential of less than or equal to 1: (ii) development of energy efficient air conditioning (AC) systems for warm and humid climates to increase the coefficient of performance (COP) of ventilation load cooling by greater than or to 50 percent; and (iii) increased efficiency of hot climate vapor compress ion AC systems for re-circulating air loads by increasing the COP by greater than or equal to 50 percent. One or more combination of these technologies can be utilized in buildings, where many factors influence the cooling load, including but not limited to: (1) type of building, such as office space versus hospitals (which have very high ventilation loads - almost 100 fresh air); and (2) climate type - warm and humid versus hot and dry. More information on the grant is available here.