Re: MV Built Env - Re: Approaches to Solving the Rental Energy Problem
James Kempf
jak
----- Original Message ----
From: Elisa Peters <ElisaL...@gmail.com>
To: Mountain View Built Environment <mv-sust-task...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 11:00:40 AM
Subject: MV Built Env - Re: Approaches to Solving the Rental Energy Problem
I just heard that Europe has solved this problem with ratings on
apartments. Now rents reflect total cost of living in the unit, with
less rent paid to energy-inefficient apts. I'll do some research on
the actual details, including a copy of the certificates they use.
Elisa
On Apr 22, 1:57 pm, James Kempf <kemp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hope everyone is having a suitably green Earth Day.
> Bruce's comment about the MV utility tax last night got me to thinking how to solve the vicious circle of reducing multitenant rental dwelling energy use. The circle is basically:
> - Landlords want to spend as little as possible on their properties and won't benefit from energy efficiency and solar PV anyway,
> - Tenants don't own the property so they have no reason to invest,
> - The rest of the city won't get anything out of rental unit energy efficiency.
> So the idea would be to use proceeds from a time-limited increase in the utility tax to fund subsidies for rental properties to upgrade appliances, insulation, and heating. The increase would be time-limited so that the landlords would have a deadine by which they would have to install the improvements; otherwise it is too easy to put off the improvements until tomorrow. The subsidies need to be calculated so that, together with the rather paltry rebates given by PG&E and the investment tax writeoff the landlords get on their state and federal taxes, the result would have real appeal to the rather hard-nosed calculations made by landlords. The city would additionally need to hire or task existing staff to do outreach co-ordination, which would basically go around to landlords and show them what a good deal they're getting. I'd even be tempted to recommend that the outreach co-ordinators can act as personal shoppers for the landlords to help them arrange
> to buy and install the improvements, but perhaps that is going too far.
> The tenants have to put up with the inconvenience of having their units worked on while they are there. What the tenants get out of the deal is that their electricity and gas bills are reduced, modulo a potential rent increase that the landlords might introduce to offset the remaining cost of the capital improvement. One would hope that the subsidy would be sufficiently attractive that the landlords wouldn't feel the need to do this, but you never know.
> What the city in general gets out of this is an immediate reduction of 30-50% in energy use for over 50% (depending on participation) of the residential buildings. But it would still be nice to offer something to homeowners, who are going to have to pay for the additional tax. Following up on the idea of a competition, a contest could be established with another city, with a prize to the winner. Something like this was done when the terminus for the light rail was under consideration. Mountain View and Sunnyvale had a kind of low key competition, and Mountain View won. In this case, perhaps we could get some funding agency (wealthy individuals, VCs, foundations, state or federal government, etc.) to sponsor a prize for which city could reduce carbon the most, which the winner could use the money for some kind of civic improvement project (perhaps even a renewable energy related project). Homeowners and others that don't benefit directly from the
> subsidy would benefit if the prize was won.
> I had been thinking along the lines of a property tax rebate for this kind of purpose, but I believe property tax is controlled by the county so it might be easier politically to go through the utility tax, though I think that by California law it would still require winning a referendum at supermajority levels. The incentive of potentially winning the competition might even be enough to get people to vote for the tax.
> Thoughts?
> jak
