The Plan currently has a price tag of $3.5 trillion, but is being cut back to something closer to $1.75 trillion and will include a wide range of investments in everything from families to health care to climate change.
As someone having spent his career investing in climate technology, I believe climate change is an existential threat to humanity – the most important challenge facing our city, our country and our planet.
Eleven years ago, I founded Aeroseal, a company dedicated to advancing the sustainability of humanity through improving efficiency, enhancing lives, and combatting climate change. We’ve grown to almost 140 people across two facilities in Dayton, where we create technology that improves the energy efficiency, climate impact, and health and comfort of homes and commercial buildings.
Buildings are critical in the climate fight. The U.S. Department of Energy says that the 129 million residential and commercial buildings in the U.S. “use roughly 40% of the nation’s energy, and account for a little over a third of our carbon emissions.” That’s why the BBB Plan includes significant tax credits and incentives for builders, commercial operators, and homeowners to invest in technologies that will improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.
For example, the current version of the bill includes a significant expansion of the 25C home renovation credit, which will give homeowners a $1,200 tax credit every year to make energy improvements to their home, such as replacing a furnace, adding insulation, and sealing ductwork. Imagine getting a tax credit for doing something that will not only help the environment but will also save you money at the same time. For an average home in Dayton, sealing your ductwork can save more than $400 per year in utility bills, while improving indoor air quality and comfort in your home.
And that’s just the start. The BBB Plan includes other investments that will make building and buying Energy Star and Net Zero Ready homes more affordable, will improve the energy efficiency of office buildings, will invest in more energy efficient low-income housing, and will make it easier and less expensive to buy the climate technology needed to reduce emissions and save the planet.
This isn’t just an abstract debate about government spending in Washington, D.C. This matters to all of us. These investments will make peoples’ lives better, put more money in their pockets, and help industry create more and better jobs. Aeroseal is proof – we’ve more than doubled our workforce during the pandemic, and we plan to hire at least 60 more employees by the end of next year, all in the Dayton region. Our work can create thousands of jobs across the country as contractors go from having already sealed nearly 200,000 homes to sealing a majority of them. The Build Back Better Plan is an important step on the path toward sealing every residential and commercial building, which would allow us to eliminate 1 gigaton of the world’s carbon emissions.
Spending trillions on infrastructure is expensive and companies like Aeroseal will have to pay more in taxes to help pay for it. But we will benefit more from having better infrastructure and better policies making it easier to buy our products and services. Companies like ours will continue creating good paying jobs right here in Dayton and elsewhere if these bills pass. And Ohioans will get better infrastructure and more money in their pockets, all while helping improve the environment. That’s something we should all support.
Amit Gupta is CEO of Aeroseal, LLC
About the Author