By Elizabeth Beardsley, Senior Coverage Counsel, U.S. Inexperienced Constructing Council
The Inflation Discount Act consists of dozens of packages to fund local weather mitigation and adaptation actions in buildings, constructing supplies, cities, and states. USGBC continues to replace its slide deck highlighting the packages associated to inexperienced buildings and communities as extra info turns into accessible. Plus, some packages from the bipartisan Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act (IIJA) are starting to roll out, corresponding to vitality enchancment funding for varsity services.
Proper now, the IRA focus is on stakeholder enter. Federal companies are issuing requests for info (RFIs), posing questions to collect concepts as they work to develop steerage and implement their packages.
- Hearken to the writer on the December 2021 episode of HPAC Engineering’s On The Air podcast.
USGBC has submitted feedback on a number of RFIs up to now week. We offered feedback to the Division of Vitality (DOE) on the IIJA’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program, which has $10.5 billion to enhance grids. USGBC referred to as for DOE to make use of a few of these funds to advance grid-interactive environment friendly buildings (GEBs). Such buildings can ship great advantages to the grid, serving to to maneuver from analysis and demonstration to precise deployment at scale that may assist the U.S. lead the world in creating and implementing applied sciences.
To that finish, we urged DOE to allocate substantial parts of a number of packages—Good Grid Grants, Grid Resilience Grants and the Grid Innovation Program—to GEB actions, ideally for tasks that deploy a numerous set of applied sciences for assembly grid flexibility objectives, quite than ones that merely set up sensible meters. To make sure funded tasks obtain outcomes, we advisable DOE take into account use of related third-party certifications in all three packages, which might embrace PEER and LEED. We additionally advisable that utilities not be the only real funding recipients in these packages.
USGBC additionally submitted a response to the U.S. Housing and City Growth (HUD) RFI for the Inexperienced and Resilient Retrofit Program. This program will deploy $837.5 million by grants and loans to multifamily inexpensive housing retrofits, with targets of enhancing vitality and water effectivity, indoor air high quality, sustainability, constructing electrification, low-carbon supplies, and on-site low-carbon vitality technology and storage. View feedback on the RFI.
We advisable that HUD:
- Emphasize vitality and water effectivity because the core start line for all retrofits;
- Collaborate with stakeholders to implement this system successfully, in addition to help outreach and equitable distribution of funds;
- Apply HUD’s expertise in different packages and embrace leveraged personal sector finance, in addition to optimizing use of different incentives and funding for deep retrofits;
- Undertake constructing science greatest practices and life cycle cost-benefit evaluation, accounting for nonfinancial advantages;
- Be certain that sufficient and applicable information are collected to show the worth of this system.
Subsequent on USGBC’s agenda will probably be feedback to the U.S. Treasury and IRS on IRA tax credit, together with 179D (business constructing vitality effectivity tax deduction), 45L (new energy-efficient and 0 vitality houses), and renewable vitality and storage credit, in addition to feedback for the Normal Providers Administration on a number of federal constructing and procurement packages.
Between now and December, responses will probably be due on RFIs related to USGBC members, together with a number of pertaining to those IRA packages:
- GSA: Federal Purchase Clear Request for Info: Development Supplies with Considerably Decrease Embodied Carbon, due Nov. 3;
- Treasury and IRS: Request for Feedback on Prevailing Wage, Apprenticeship, Home Content material, and Vitality Communities Necessities, due Nov. 4;
- Treasury and IRS: Request for Feedback on Incentive Provisions for Enhancing the Vitality Effectivity of Residential and Business Buildings, due Nov. 4;
- Treasury and IRS: Request for Feedback on Vitality Safety Tax Credit for Manufacturing Beneath Sections 48C and 45X, due Nov. 4;
- Treasury and IRS: Request for Feedback on Elective Cost of Relevant Credit and Switch of Sure Credit, due Nov. 4;
- DOE: Vitality Enhancements in Rural or Distant Areas (ERA) Program, due Nov. 28;
- EPA: Request for Info: Greenhouse Fuel Discount Fund, due Dec. 5;
- EPA: Request for Info: Higher Indoor Air High quality Administration To Assist Cut back COVID-19 and Different Illness Transmission in Buildings: Technical Help Wants and Priorities To Enhance Public Well being, due Dec. 5;
- Treasury: SBA, Commerce, DOT, HUD, and USDA, Discover and Request for Info-Alternatives and Challenges in Federal Group Funding Applications, due Dec. 5;
- GSA and DOE: Applied sciences for Web Zero Carbon Buildings, due Dec. 9.
Please contact the Advocacy and Coverage group with any questions.