Claim: The "Cap and Trade energy bill" requires that all existing real estate must meet new energy standards before it can be sold.
Example:[Collected via e-mail, November 2009]
For those of you who have real estate for sale or rent, be advised that the Cap and Trade energy bill that passed Congress has the following provisions:
Before any real estate, new or old, commercial or residential, can be sold or rented, the building must meet the new energy standards set forth in the Bill. These standards are about a general 35% increase in what is now required in building codes. It requires such things as requiring solar reflective roofs, double pane windows, energy efficient appliances and lighting, increased insulation, leak test, and on and on and on. In order to sell or rent any building, you will be required to have a certificate of efficiency issued by a federal building efficiency inspector (new division of the US Dept. of Energy). No certification, no sell or rent, simple as that.
Origins:HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (also known as the "cap-and-trade energy bill"), is a bill intended to "create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy." The bill was passed by the House
of Representatives in June 2009, but it has not yet been voted upon by the Senate.
The version of the bill passed by the House sets energy efficiency standards benchmarks that must be met by new buildings, both residential and
commercial, constructed after the bill takes effect (i.e., after the bill was passed by both the House and Senate and signed into law). Contrary to what is claimed above, however, HR 2454 contains no provisions requiring that existing homes "must meet the new energy standards" before they can be re-sold. Likewise, the bill includes no requirements that an existing residential property undergo an energy usage-related audit or inspection and be assigned a "certificate of efficiency issued by a federal building efficiency inspector" before it can be re-sold or rented.
As the National Association of Realtors (NAR) noted of HR 2454, the bill merely provides for federal funding to be offered as incentives for owners of existing properties to voluntarily improve the energy efficiency of their structures:
[HR 2454] does not require that buildings be retrofitted. Rather, it provides federal funding for states to offer financial incentives, such as loans or grants, for property owners to voluntarily decide to improve energy efficiency. In order to receive the funding, there are conditions on how states can spend the money, such as verification of energy improvements performed by private contractors, but that is only to ensure that taxpayer dollars are actually spent on the purpose for which it is intended (building efficiency improvements).
There is no point-of-sale guideline or any other requirement of any sort in the House passed bill. Nowhere does this bill create a federal requirement that a property owner would have to retrofit a property to any guideline at any time — let alone at point of sale. The bill does stipulate federal guidelines to ensure that states spend and verify that bill funding goes to financial incentives for property owners to voluntarily make improvements. An entirely separate bill would have to be drafted, introduced, passed by committees and both houses of Congress, and signed by the President into law in order for the Federal government to go beyond [HR 2454's] financial incentives for voluntary energy improvements.
Last updated: 1 December 2009
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/captrade.asp
