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Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the ‘Cap & Trade’ bill.”

CLICK ON IMAGE TO READ CLEAN ENERGY ACT SUMMARY

The bill actually encourages the use of the labels when “there are major renovations or additions made to a building in accordance with a building permit,” when building sales are “recorded for tax and title purposes,” when “a new lien [is] recorded on the property,” or when there’s a change in “operation of the building for purposes of utility billing.”

• This bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator.
• To get this permission, you will have to have the energy efficiency of your home measured. Then the government will tell you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be forced to make modifications to your home under the retrofit provisions of this Act to comply with the new energy and water efficiency requirements.
• Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a license (called a “label” in the Act) that must be posted on your property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air conditioner. If you don’t get a high enough rating, you can’t sell.

Under the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House, a federal “Administrator” will create a label that lists the energy efficiency that residential and commercial buildings are expected to achieve based on their design and that also lists what the actual energy efficiency is of an individual building, based on a federally designed test, but the tests are not mandatory for all building owners, though the Administrator is vested with $50 million per year for 10 years to create the standards and tests and also convince states to use it.

To compel states to get onboard, the Administrator can also take money from government sales of carbon allowances and give it to states to create label systems, which pretty much ensures that the energy labels will be mandated by most states, but still, it is unlikely every homeowner will have to get one, unless a homeowner has a house or a commercial building for sale or owns rental properties. The bill actually encourages the use of the labels when “there are major renovations or additions made to a building in accordance with a building permit,” when building sales are “recorded for tax and title purposes,” when “a new lien [is] recorded on the property,” or when there’s a change in “operation of the building for purposes of utility billing.”

The bill does speak about retrofitting properties, but it covers only how much the government will pay toward having homes retrofitted, who can get the money, and the rent controls that building owners must abide by if they accept government cash. It does not mandate that all homes must be retrofitted.