PRESS RELEASE: TARGETED SHAHEEN-PORTMAN BILL HEADED TO PRESIDENT’S DESK FOR SIGNATURE
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) today announced that their Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015 passed the House and is now headed to the President for signature. This bill, which passed the Senate in March, contains key energy efficiency provisions that will strengthen the economy, save consumers money, and reduce pollution.
“At long last, Congress is finally going to deliver bipartisan energy efficiency legislation to the President’s desk,” said Shaheen. “On the bill’s merits – creating jobs, saving consumers money and reducing pollution – it was never a hard sell. The tough part was convincing Washington to not play politics with a good idea. But persistence has paid off and this legislation is a small but significant victory over legislative gridlock. I will continue to work across the aisle to pass more common sense energy efficiency proposals and get Congress back in the business of legislating for New Hampshire and the American people.”
“Our targeted energy efficiency bill has garnered widespread support because of a simple fact – it is good for the economy and good for the environment,” said Portman. “This is an important part of our energy plan for America that can help bring jobs back, help make our manufacturers more competitive, and actually help to protect the environment. I’m pleased that it is now headed to the President for signature, and will continue to work for passage of my larger bill and a national energy strategy that boosts American workers while protecting the environment at the same time.”
Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, said, “Senator Shaheen, the Honorary Chair of the Alliance, is a leader who recognizes that energy efficiency ‘delivers the goods’ to American consumers and businesses by creating jobs, growing the economy and protecting the environment so she has worked tirelessly with Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) to make energy efficiency the ‘bipartisan sweet spot’ in the national energy policy debate – and together they have succeeded with the passage of S. 535.”
The Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015 includes three simple but effective provisions that have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office to be budget neutral. Title I establishes a voluntary, market-driven approach to aligning the interests of commercial building owners and their tenants to reduce energy consumption. Title II exempts certain electric resistance water heaters used for demand response from pending Department of Energy regulation. Title III requires that federally-leased buildings without Energy Star labels benchmark and disclose their energy usage data, where practical.
Text of the legislation can be found here.
Portman and Shaheen introduced their larger energy efficiency bill, the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act, earlier this year. It is scheduled to receive a hearing in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on April 30th.
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