In a bold move to curb the growth of greenhouse gas emissions from the Portland area, city officials plan to charge builders hundreds of dollars for each new home that is not extremely energy efficient. And it would require, as part of every existing home sale, that an energy efficiency report be done by home inspectors.
Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the carbon fee and inspection requirement would levy taxes upon builders who merely comply with the energy efficiency requirements of the Oregon building code, already one of the most stringent in the nation. It would then pay cash rewards to developers who make buildings that save at least 45 percent more energy than the code requires.
The plan will go before Portland residents, in hearings, in January. With passage, the carbon-fee rules would be in place by 2010.
Builders in Portland on Wednesday were already pushing back.
“There is no way the homebuilders will ever support a mandated program,” said Jim McCauley, vice president of government affairs for the Homebuilders Association of Metropolitan Portland. “This has largely been a totally internal conversation with only select invited parties.”
Woo! It is at this point that we all point and laugh, Nelson Muntz style, at the all the Charlotte builders and real estate folks who just helped keep Charlotte on its rampaging Portland South path by helping to save the transit tax on Tuesday. You spent tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours in service of a regime that intends to regulate market preferences — and your profits — right out of town.
Oh, sure it won’t happen now, or even the next year or two. In the meantime you may even make a little a money on transit oriented development. But make no mistake where we are headed.
Ha-ha!
