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Foxnews.com...
Pelosi’s
Energy Savings Program
Evaporates
By Stephen Clark
Published August 05, 2011
House
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s
four-year effort to “Green the Capitol” is officially no-more, having
been
dumped into an existing energy-savings program on the Hill in a move
that
Republicans say will save more money, eliminate redundancy and promote
collaboration.
In
response, some Democrats are crying
foul, saying the move reflects the low priority that energy savings is
for
Republicans.
The
House Chief Administrative Office
announced Thursday that the Architect of the Capitol’s Office will take
over
the functions of the program that expanded House recycling and led to
thousands
of energy-efficient light bulbs being installed on the Hill.
“Saving
energy saves money and
consolidating our sustainability programs helps save taxpayer dollars
by
improving efficiencies and allows us to make smart and sound
investments
throughout the Capitol complex,” Architect of the Capitol Stephen Ayers
said in
a statement.
“This
greatly improves our return on
investment in congressional facilities by continuing to include
sustainability
in our long-range project planning,” he said.
But
Kyle Anderson, a spokesman for the
Democrats on the House Administration Committee, expressed little
confidence in
the architect’s sustainability efforts and said the move sends a “clear
message” about the GOP-led House’s “lack of commitment to
environmentally
responsible policies.”
“This
move should not be a surprise to
any of us,” he said. “Rather than focusing on creating jobs and helping
to
stimulate the economy, one of the first decisions made by this majority
was to
reintroduce polystyrene -- a known environmental pollutant -- to House
food service
facilities.”
Salley
Wood, a spokeswoman for
Republicans on the House Administration Committee, told FoxNews.com
that the
AOC “has demonstrated beyond a doubt that they’re entirely best suited
to
handle this.”
Pelosi
launched the program in 2007
when she was speaker of the House. The program sought to reduce energy
use by
the House by 50 percent over 10 years and reduce the institution’s
carbon
footprint.
But
Wood said that it never made sense
for Pelosi to launch the program when the AOC began its own initiative
in 2005
under a federal mandate. Instead, Pelosi should have allowed AOC to
execute her
effort, Wood said, adding that her effort was “duplicative” and
included
“projects that were wasteful.”
The
total cost of Pelosi’s program
isn’t known but Wood said the operating costs alone ranged from
$650,000 to
$2.4 million per year. That doesn’t include the cost of among other
things
outside contractors, the AOC purchasing and installing energy efficient
equipment, and a composting program that cost taxpayers $475,000 a year
before
Republicans killed it in January for its inefficiency.
Pelosi
spokesman Drew Hammill said the
program has enabled the House to save $3.2 million per year and save as
much as
$50 million over a decade through computer server consolidation,
building
upgrades, efficient lighting and other efforts.
“While
the initiative has enjoyed
bipartisan participation and models the efforts taken by many in the
private
sector, many Republican members have chosen to demagogue the issue,”
Hammill
said. “The Green the Capitol initiative has been a successful
sustainability
effort that has saved taxpayer money, cut energy usage and reduced
waste.”
Since
2008, the House has reduced its
carbon footprint by 74 percent under the program and has begun
purchasing wind
energy to meet all electricity needs and burns only natural gas at the
Capitol
Power Plant, Hammill said.
Ayers
has worked closely with Pelosi’s
program to take “bold steps to apply the progress made by the House to
the
entire Capitol complex,” Hammill said.
“The
architect should continue to
implement measures in the most aggressive manner possible including the
50
percent energy reduction goal for the House of Representatives,” he
said.
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