Energizing Schools: Creating Jobs and Saving Money

Statement

I want to talk to you about large-scale energy conservation projects, starting with our public school buildings. Every community in Oregon has a public school in it. Now to give you some perspective, we spend $10 billion on energy every year in Oregon and 85 percent of that leaves the state. That's $8.5 billion--twice as much as we spend on K-20 education every year--that's money that's not available for Oregon schools, not available for investing in the Oregon economy, and not available to invest in Oregon jobs.

We have about 90 million square feet of public school buildings in Oregon. They pay anywhere from 25 cents to $2.20 a square foot for energy. That's a huge opportunity for conservation! So the idea is to bond against the anticipated cost savings, and put people to work in every community in Oregon starting next summer.

These are good, middle-income trade jobs--we've got a 30 percent unemployment rate in our trade unions. These jobs are also entry-level opportunities that would create career paths for people to work from less skilled jobs toward more skilled jobs. And to the extend that we use Oregon products--Oregon windows from Jeld-Wen for example--in this retro-fitting, we create an additional source of economic activity.

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