The ciimate plan has a few things that the lead in urban area will not have

[nadinbrzezinski]

• Reducing Barriers to Investment in Energy Efficiency: Energy efficiency upgrades
bring significant cost savings, but upfront costs act as a barrier to more widespread
investment. In response, the Administration is committing to a number of new executive
actions. As soon as this fall, the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service will
finalize a proposed update to its Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program to
provide up to $250 million for rural utilities to finance efficiency investments by
businesses and homeowners across rural America. The Department is also streamlining
its Rural Energy for America program to provide grants and loan guarantees directly to
agricultural producers and rural small businesses for energy efficiency and renewable
energy systems.

In addition, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s efforts include a $23
million Multifamily Energy Innovation Fund designed to enable affordable housing
providers, technology firms, academic institutions, and philanthropic organizations to test
new approaches to deliver cost-effective residential energy. In order to advance ongoing
efforts and bring stakeholders together, the Federal Housing Administration will convene
representatives of the lending community and other key stakeholders for a mortgage
roundtable in July to identify options for factoring energy efficiency into the mortgage
underwriting and appraisal process upon sale or refinancing of new or existing homes

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/image/president27sclimateactionplan.pdf

I intend to blog on this later, at my own site. This is a critical piece buried (well not if you read it, but I had to scan for the lead earlier in the day.

For those of you in rural areas, well just saved you the going through it. And it is on page 9 by the way.

Nah, will go for the paper... so reading this with a fine tooth comb.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. A couple more quotes for you to digest, and realize there is one that bothers me

FREE TRADE is in here too. But more on that in a sec...

• Expanding the President’s Better Buildings Challenge: The Better Buildings
Challenge, focused on helping American commercial and industrial buildings become at
least 20 percent more energy efficient by 2020, is already showing results. More than 120
diverse organizations, representing over 2 billion square feet are on track to meet the
2020 goal: cutting energy use by an average 2.5 percent annually, equivalent to about $58
million in energy savings per year. To continue this success, the Administration will
expand the program to multifamily housing – partnering both with private and affordable
building owners and public housing agencies to cut energy waste. In addition, the
Administration is launching the Better Buildings Accelerators, a new track that will
support and encourage adoption of State and local policies to cut energy waste, building
on the momentum of ongoing efforts at that level.

Preserving the Role of Forests in Mitigating Climate Change: America’s forests play a
critical role in addressing carbon pollution, removing nearly 12 percent of total U.S. greenhouse
gas emissions each year. In the face of a changing climate and increased risk of wildfire,
drought, and pests, the capacity of our forests to absorb carbon is diminishing. Pressures to
develop forest lands for urban or agricultural uses also contribute to the decline of forest carbon
sequestration. Conservation and sustainable management can help to ensure our forests continue
to remove carbon from the atmosphere while also improving soil and water quality, reducing
wildfire risk, and otherwise managing forests to be more resilient in the fact of climate change.
The Administration is working to identify new approaches to protect and restore our forests, as well as other critical landscapes including grasslands and wetlands, in the face of a changing climate

Now this one, remember the make fuel out of salt water? And do you know a thing about military bases and rooftop solar? Here... more on this.

Federal Government Leadership in Energy Efficiency: On December 2, 2011, President
Obama signed a memorandum entitled “Implementation of Energy Savings Projects and
Performance-Based Contracting for Energy Savings,” challenging federal agencies, in support of
the Better Buildings Challenge, to enter into $2 billion worth of performance-based contracts
within two years. Performance contracts drive economic development, utilize private sector
innovation, and increase efficiency at minimum costs to the taxpayer, while also providing long-
term savings in energy costs. Federal agencies have committed to a pipeline of nearly $2.3
billion from over 300 reported projects. In coming months, the Administration will take a
number of actions to strengthen efforts to promote energy efficiency, including through
performance contracting

Ah finally free trade... in a local paper I suppose I should include a paragraph, but...

Negotiating Global Free Trade in Environmental Goods and Services: The U.S. will work
with trading partners to launch negotiations at the World Trade Organization towards global free
trade in environmental goods, including clean energy technologies such as solar, wind, hydro and
geothermal. The U.S. will build on the consensus it recently forged among the 21 Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies in this area. In 2011, APEC economies agreed to
reduce tariffs to 5 percent or less by 2015 on a negotiated list of 54 environmental goods. The
APEC list will serve as a foundation for a global agreement in the WTO, with participating
countries expanding the scope by adding products of interest. Over the next year, we will work
towards securing participation of countries which account for 90 percent of global trade in
environmental goods, representing roughly $481 billion in annual environmental goods trade.
We will also work in the Trade in Services Agreement negotiations towards achieving free trade
in environmental services.

And this last one, as part of APEC, will be fought by the oil industry like their survival depended on it (they do not realize it, they are on life support, but that is a matter of fifty years, not two)

Phasing Out Subsidies that Encourage Wasteful Consumption of Fossil Fuels: The
International Energy Agency estimates that the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies – which amount
to more than $500 billion annually – would lead to a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions below business as usual by 2050. At the 2009 G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, the United
States successfully advocated for a commitment to phase out these subsidies, and we have since
won similar commitments in other fora such as APEC. President Obama is calling for the
elimination of U.S. fossil fuel tax subsidies in his Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 budget, and we will
continue to collaborate with partners around the world toward this goal.

Ok, ok, have fun. I just selected what either might interest my readers, and might is the operative word, this is policy, or a few that might be of interest here. Now if I could get a couple forever home puppies to go with this... (yes I am that cynical anymore)