{"id":5372,"date":"2009-03-30T12:02:24","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T11:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=5372"},"modified":"2009-03-30T12:02:24","modified_gmt":"2009-03-30T11:02:24","slug":"government-should-offer-incentives-for-homes-to-go-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/contributions\/government-should-offer-incentives-for-homes-to-go-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Government should offer incentives for homes to go green"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.progressive.org\">Hank Kalet<\/a> |<\/p>\n<p>The federal government should help homeowners go green.<\/p>\n<p>Several states are already seeking ways to encourage homeowners to switch from dirty fuels to cleaner energy sources, kick-starting a green revolution house by house.<\/p>\n<p>In New Jersey, the state Legislature recently passed a bill that would require homebuilders to offer buyers solar energy systems as an option. And the state government provides grants and loans for solar installation on existing housing.<\/p>\n<p>Communities, neighborhood groups and educational facilities in New Mexico are experimenting with solar and biomass systems, and dozens of cities and counties around the country are doing the same.<\/p>\n<p>Take a look at California, where several cities are offering homeowners the opportunity to finance the installation of solar power the same way most public water, sewer or gas-line projects are financed \u2013 over a 20-year period to be paid back as a special assessment on a homeowner\u2019s property taxes.<\/p>\n<p>Cities and towns, however, have to get the money to finance these programs. Berkeley, the first city in California to create a public-financing program, turned to the banks for financing. Palm Desert, another California community that offers financing, used its own reserves to get its pilot project off the ground.<\/p>\n<p>But interest in such programs could outstrip the ability of local governments to procure financing, which is why the federal government must step in.<\/p>\n<p>Most states and towns face tight budgets because revenue has become scarce and their budgets, by law, have to be balanced.<\/p>\n<p>Federal money ought to be made available \u2013 as it has for energy-efficiency projects and large-scale conversions of the energy grid.<\/p>\n<p>By engaging individual homeowners in going green, we will not only reduce our carbon footprint one household at a time. We will simultaneously be building the larger constituency we\u2019ll need to arrive at our clean energy future.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hank Kalet<\/strong> is online editor and columnist for The Princeton Packet newspaper group in New Jersey. He can be reached at <a href=\"mailto:pmproj@progressive.org\">pmproj@progressive.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Hank Kalet | The federal government should help homeowners go green. Several states are already seeking ways to encourage homeowners to switch from dirty fuels to cleaner energy sources, kick-starting a green revolution house by house. In New Jersey, the state Legislature recently passed a bill that would require homebuilders to offer buyers solar [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5622],"class_list":{"0":"post-5372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-contributions","7":"tag-environmental-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}