Residential Retrofit Markets Need Rationalizing
Over on Grist, David Roberts has some ideas about ways to rationalize residential energy-efficiency retrofit markets. Right now, he says, the marketplace is fragmented:
the market involves thousands and thousands of tiny, sporadic transactions, usually involving small-scale buyers and small-scale providers.
What it needs is something more than the “blunt tool” of raising energy prices — we need something to jump start and rationalize the market now. Roberts gathers together a few suggestions about how to bring focus, standards and economic power to the retrofit market.
One way would be through collective purchasing at the community level (cities or even neighborhoods). Another is to open up some financing options (currently, the options are pretty much non-existent, though there are a few tax incentives). Yet another is by improving the quality of information to consumers (that’s why we’re here blogging about this stuff) and increasing the transparency of claims made by vendors and manufacturers.
