文档介绍：外文题目: Toward a Low-Carbon Economy---Municipal Financing
For Energy Efficiency and Solar Power
出处: Environment Magazine
作者: Merrian C. Fuller, pagni Portis, and
Daniel M. Kammen
The economic and environmental need to transition to a low-carbon economy is now at the forefront of energy science, engineering, and policy discussions in the United States and internationally. Former Vice President Al Gore has called for a carbon-free electricity supply in the United States by 2018,1 and in California, Japan, and the United Kingdom, a growing list of municipalities have legislated 70–80 percent or higher reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions over the next four to five decades. These cuts are consistent with the mendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (). Thus far much of the effort has been focused on technology and policy solutions, with very little attention given to how this change can be enabled through creative financing.
A critical arena for this transformation is in buildings, which account for more than 70 percent of the electricity use2 and almost 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions3 in the United States. Many of the more stringent laws to reduce energy use in buildings, such as Title 24 in California, 4 target new buildings. However, because buildings have many-decade lifetimes, it may be virtually impossible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the levels described by the lower-risk scenarios of the 5 and adopted by local municipalities,6 states,7 and nations8 without a targeted effort to reduce energy demand in existing homes mercial means that retrofit efforts, such as improving energy efficiency and adding solar photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal systems to buildings, need to expand dramatically.
Many barriers exist to reducing energy consumption and increasing the use of renewable energy. One is high first cost (“up-front cost”), which is both a psychological and financial barrier for many people. Ou