Daily Score Blog

If you're a low-income resident in Washington state and not feeling so great, you'd be wise to pack your bags for Oregon.

Just as Washington prepares to pull the plug on health care for more than 40 percent of the 100,000 working poor who are covered by the state-subsidized Basic Health Plan, Oregon announces that it's pushing to expand coverage to an additional 80,000 uninsured children and 35,000 low-income adults. (See this great piece from Oregon Public Broadcasting on Washington care, and this one from the Oregonian).  

The two states' economies are both in the tank, so how's Oregon able to aid the ailing in this time of great need?

A new report out today reveals a real and urgent problem related to the impacts of global warming. It's what the report's research team from -- USC, Berkeley, and Occidental College in Los Angeles -- calls "The Climate Gap." The climate gap is the "often hidden and unequal harm climate change will cause people of color and the poor in the United States." (At Sightline, we've blogged about this issue quite a bit in our climate fairness series.)

Along with the report, the researchers also released an analysis of the American Clean Energy Security Act currently under consideration by Congress -- with solutions to the climate gap top of mind. The researchers suggest that offering fewer free pollution permits to the oil sector -- which has a majority of its facilities in minority and low-income neighborhoods -- and several cushions against higher prices would be positive steps.

Check this out. Washingtonians could save enough electricity to power the state's economic growth for 10 years -- says a new study from the NW Energy Coalition.

From The Power of Efficiency:

• Over the past 30 years, energy efficiency has proven to be a low-cost, low-risk investment for meeting the region’s growing demand for electricity and avoiding the need to build costly new generating resources. Since 1978, regional energy efficiency measures have produced nearly 3,700 aMW of savings – more than enough to meet the needs of three cities the size of Seattle...
  
• With new and emerging technologies and more integrated building design, there is enough cost effective energy efficiency – approximately 5,200 average megawatts - to meet all the region’s growing needs for electricity through 2020.

And the closer:

Increased energy efficiency does far more for the region than provide an affordable, clean energy future. It also stimulates job growth, keeps local dollars in the region and often also conserves water.

The BC Sustainable Energy Association, “a non-profit association of citizens, professionals and practitioners, committed to promoting sustainable energy in British Columbia,” has produced an analysis of the split incentive problem in British Columbia and a proposal to fix the problem through its Green Landlords Project. (Split incentives happen when owners of multi-unit housing have no interest in energy improvements because they don’t pay the energy bills and tenants don’t have an interest improvements because they don’t own the property).

The Project’s report starts off on the right path by quantifying the impacts of energy inefficiencies in rental housing. Rental housing makes up a third of BC’s housing and produces about 1.4 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. It is also the slice of the housing sector that provides housing for low and middle-income households where energy costs make up more than 10 percent of total household income.

The report acknowledges what we discussed in earlier posts; most efficiency programs are targeting single family homes to the exclusion of multi-unit rental homes where there are huge potential savings for the lowest income families.

What will solve this problem?