Pay for infrastructure, conservation now or suffer later
As someone who has been involved in construction for 45 years and educating about green building and climate change since 2004, I think it is important for everyone to understand that deferring maintenance and repairs inevitably costs more than tackling the problem proactively.
Every crack in a road allows water to intrude, eroding the substrate, and in winter freezing and causing further damage and deterioration. With buildings and with roads, proactive maintenance and repair is imperative.
Some of this year’s candidates for state offices repeatedly pledge to halt gas taxes to reduce the pain at the pump. What I hear when they say that is the candidate is willing to virtually bankrupt the state Highway Department and the candidate does not care if our roads deteriorate because the state cannot afford to fix them.
What I must remind you is that gas taxes pay for road repairs and upkeep. Stopping the gas tax is putting our roads and bridges at risk from the lack of funds that will not be available down the road because of our shortsighted solutions today.
One of the problems with electric cars is that because they do not use gas or diesel, they do not contribute to the cost to maintain and repair the roads they drive on. The states are working on solutions to that problem.
Construction costs go up about 8%-10% a year, so deferred maintenance always costs more. 2021’s costs were more than 23% higher than pre-pandemic 2019. I remember when a 4-by-8 sheet of drywall was less than $1.99, and when it went over $2 builders complained, wondering how they could make a living, it is now $10.99.
We should embrace high fuel costs as an incentive to work to reduce our use of oil and gas.
The solution to high fuel costs is to focus on energy efficiency. Investing in efficiency as a tool for saving energy pays long-term dividends by reducing our longterm need for fuel.
We should be following the lead of President Jimmy Carter, whose focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy led to a 15% drop in energy use over 10 years, according to the Energy Information Administration. Carter also helped cut the amount of imported oil and raised domestic production.
Those policies led to 20 years of low oil prices, for which President Reagan took credit when he deregulated the industry. This was just the second time our energy use went down. The first time was because of the Arab oil embargo when the price of oil doubled in a few months, causing us to drop our use by about 8%.
I remember having to get gas on alternate days because it was being rationed. Carter’s introduction of fuel economy standards helped spur the auto and truck industries to improve their products’ efficiency and reduce their emissions.
At the time they were proposed, the companies lamented the impossibility of achieving the goals, but they did eventually achieve those goals. Not only did Carter’s policies lower our energy use, they led to years of economic growth, as our GDP increased by 94% during that time.
Through focusing on energy efficiency, our nation, which used to be the largest consumer of energy per person, has dropped to 11th on the list. One of our most successful government efforts for energy efficiency is the Energy Star program, which rewards the top 20% of energy efficiency products with an Energy Star certification.
The competition for that designation has improved the efficiency of the whole industry. Improving the efficiency of our energy use is six times more effective at reducing climate change than adding renewable energy, and has a much better return on investment.
It is time to focus on sustainable solutions, and artificially lowering the price of oil and gas by eliminating the gas tax is not sustainable at all. Instead we should raise the gas tax and invest the money in sustainable technologies that will wean us from the need for burning fossil fuels including convenient mass transit, something the Lehigh Valley sadly lacks.
Investing in a reliable and sustainable energy grid will allow us to transition to an all-electric future.
Do you wonder why Europe’s fuel costs are so much higher than ours? Because of fuel taxes, which are as high as 24%. The roads and rails in Europe benefited from government investment using those funds.
Europe is far ahead of the U.S. in green building in part because they pay so much more for fuel and because of much more stringent building codes, which promote efficiency technologies.
Knee-jerk reactions to high energy costs are not the solution. Well thought out solutions leading the U.S. to a more sustainable future is what we need, and there are a lot of sustainable technologies.
Just look at the Zero Energy ready home movement, which is producing houses that use almost no energy and get solar systems added that both supply the home and charge the car.