(I would assume that a home improvement load would either a) be tied to the title of the house along the lines of an assumable mortgage or b) be collectible at time of sale.)

Homeowners/landlords insurance should cover replacement costs. If you add on a dining room does not your insurance premium increase?

What happens in the situation where they don’t save? For example, a home is weatherized, but then immediately sold/rented to people who have much higher energy consumption, even in the more efficient home. How is repayment handled in that situation?

What if some kind of disaster occurs and the home/apartment is destroyed? Does the loan have to be repaid? Does the insurance company repay it? If so, then won’t this additional risk taken on by the insurance company cause the homeowner’s premiums to increase?

Saving over 50% of the warming energy in your house, for nothing.

We have something like this just starting to happen here in California. AB 811, signed last July by our Govenator, allows cities and counties in the Golden State to offer homeowners low interest loans for solar PV systems. The loans are treated as a property tax assessment and added to your annual property tax and then get paid back over the lifetime you own your home. If you sell the house the assessment gets transferred to the new owner.

The challenge of the moment is our cities and counties ability to fund bonds to pay for the loans. Berkeley and Palm Desert have successful programs and the statewide program is based on their model. Santa Monica is about to offer the loans but many other cities, my own included, aren’t yet up to speed on the new law – let alone ready to facilitate funding.

The difference for me as the owner of a modest sized home is the difference between coming up with $30,000 up front for my solar system or about $2,000 a year in loan payments. If they had the AB 811 funding available today, I’d have my new solar system up within a week.

And I know that when Bob says “homes” he also means condos and apartments. But we shouldn’t stop there. Small and medium sized businesses have plenty of energy to save with their buildings as well, not to mention government owned facilities all over the USA.

One idea I’ll add to this is the concept of neighbors helping neighbors do this work to their homes in a “barn-raising” style sharing of work, skills and manpower. The same way we come together to help Habitat for Humanity we can come together to help our fellow neighbors. The more experienced helping to guide the newer homeowners… The younger homeowners giving their retired neighbors a helping hand… We can do more than save energy, we can embrace our communities and come together the way we did during the campaign.

Think of all the homeowners on a block working “barn raising” style to install solar panels on all the roofs of their homes, getting the job done as a team. Think about the buying power of purchasing the panels,inverters and mounts for ten homes instead of one. Think of the shared experience and knowledge those people then have about their systems and the help they can provide each other moving forward.

That’s just one example. We’re a creative and innovative people and many of us are ready to engage with our neighbors in this old fashioned way to make a lot of what Bob talks about not only get funded, but also get accomplished.

I happened to visit a realtor in the UK recently. The typical 1-page brochure for a house now includes a standard energy-efficiency rating chart, according to UK Law.

CA does a lot of this, but so far, we don’t have house efficiency ratings in realtor brochures in any standard way.

CA AB 1103 mandates that utilities maintain records of usage of nonresidential buildings, starting next month. Starting in January 2010, disclosure is required of 12-month data to prospective buyer, lessee, or lender.