David M. Herszenhorn, who covers Congress, sent me a note from Washington today on an interesting hearing held to explore the role of efficiency in cutting Americans’ expensive energy appetite.
Here’s David’s report:WASHINGTON -– Dan Reicher, Google’s guru of all things related to energy and the environment, came to Capitol Hill on Wednesday with some ideas on how to keep Earth from overheating and poor families from freezing this winter in the face of sky-high prices for heating oil.
A central proposal, laid out in testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, was a national program aimed at cutting heat and electricity bills in 10 million low-income homes over a decade. The existing federal “weatherization” program saw its Energy Department budget eliminated recently. The hearing was called “Efficiency: The Hidden Secret to Solving Our Energy Crisis.”
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and chairman of the joint committee, said he planned to include the weatherization proposal in a bill later this year. “I am very interested in the low-income home weatherization program,” he said. “And I’m going to put in some legislation to move it up.”>>>MORE
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Google Energy Guru Pushes Congress to Insulate America
From the New York Times' DotEarth blog:
