PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
MAY 2, 2012
Important Announcement from MACG Sustainable Jobs Action Team
At a planning meeting this afternoon, the Sustainable Jobs Action Team members decided to cancel the "Organizing for a Green Economy" meeting that was scheduled for Thursday, May 3. We have identified specific short and long term issues that need action more than the planned meeting. To that end, we will pull together key institutional leaders to engage them on the time-sensitive opportunities to support the HIgh Road Contractors in Weatherize for Good, and help members benefit from participating in Clean Energy Works. We will also plan to launch a listening season to learn about the pressures on families and institutions that relate to the Triple Bottom-line values that we have been working to address.
We apologize for any inconvenience canceling this meeting may cause. And we appreciate your continued support to help families live comfortably in their home, provide living wage jobs with health benefits and improving the environment.
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By Michael Heumann, Havurah Shalom
April, 2012
MACG's Sustainable Jobs Action Team is at an exciting crossroads.
We have been working to build a green economy in the Metro area for four years. We have made important gains in achieving our triple bottom line values:
- Creating Living Wage Jobs
- Protecting the Environment
- Lowering Energy Costs
Click here to read more about these successes.
Now it is time to dis-organize, and re-organize!
We are holding an event on May 3 entitled: Organizing for a Green Economy! Building on Sustainable Jobs.
The event is an opportunity to energize people who are interested in growing the green economy and in benefiting our members and our institutions. Click here to read more about the topics on the agenda.
Please share the flyer and the information with members of your institution, and invite people who have an interest in these areas to come to the meeting on May 3.
Event Details:
Organizing for a Green Economy - Building on Sustainable Jobs
Thursday, May 3
7:00 - 9:00 PM
Bethlehem Lutheran Church (MACG office) "Fellowship Hall"
1244 NE Cesar E Chavez Blvd. (NE 39th), Portland.
To assist in recruitment, please download this flyer.
Sustainable Jobs Action Team Successes
MACG influenced legislation process that supports home energy retrofit programs in several areas. We fought to increase the wages of the people hired to do this work above minimum wage to a family-wage income level. We testified to get health insurance benefits for the workers engaged in these projects, and to encourage these jobs to go to small and minority or women-owned local businesses, as opposed to large and possibly out-of-state companies. We were more successful in some areas than others, but succeeded in bringing to these important issues.
When the pilot program for Clean Energy Works Portland began the testing phase for their energy retrofit program, MACG successfully lobbied for and won a contract to test a community organizing model as a way to generate home retrofit jobs in a concentrated location that would benefit contractors and potentially realize cost savings for homeowners. Our research led us to select the Cully Neighborhood as an area in Portland with a high proportion of homeowners in the lower income range, who lived in and area with older homes, likely in need of energy upgrades. With the efforts of many members of MACG institutions, we successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of the community organizing model for identifying homeowners interested in receiving needed home energy improvements.
Since then, the workgroup helped MACG institutions learn how they can participate with the Weatherize for Good program and receive a finders fee for each completed job, and more than 40 families have signed up for a home energy audit through MACG institutions. The high-road contractors of Weatherize for Good are paying a finders fee of either $150-$300 for each completed home retrofit that is referred by that institution.
Topics to be Presented at May 3 Meeting
- We are hoping to inform additional institutions about the opportunities of the Weatherize for Good program to help achieve the triple bottom-line values and receive the institutional finders fee incentive.
- The workgroup is aware and concerned that less is being done than is needed to reach out to lower income homeowners who could benefit from a home energy retrofit. Addressing equity is another issue that we hope to explore at the meeting.
- Another issue that has come to our attention is that a home energy retrofit results in an energy performance score which estimates the costs to heat or cool the dwelling. This is a number that allows potential buyers or renters to compare the energy efficiency among homes. There is growing interest in trying to have the energy performance score as a piece of information that is required to be included with information for potential buyers or renters of homes, condos or apartments. This would increase the incentive and value of upgrading the energy efficiency of homes and apartments, and likely increase demand for this aspect of the green economy.
- The final issue that we want to raise for MACG members to consider is whether we want to engage in efforts to require energy companies to pay homeowners and building owners for power they may generate from solar panels on their roofs. This is called a Feed-in Tariff (FIT), and it is a concept that has proved effective in Europe and in Ontario, Canada -- where the FIT has dramatically increased presence of small to medium solar installations on homes, businesses, churches and farms. As a result of paying an above market premium cost for this energy, large utility companies have been able to avoid building new coal or gas-fired power plants. FIT is seen as being a potential benefit to help grow the green economy here in Portland and to help achieve our triple bottom-line.
- There will be opportunity for attendees to express their own ideas for how to build the green economy.
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