Curley: If Thurston County leaders really wanted to reduce CO2, they’d plant trees — not require Home Energy Scores

Big news: Thurston County, on Tuesday, signed off on an ordinance requiring people to obtain Home Energy Scores before listing their properties for sale. The policy aims to encourage people in unincorporated parts of the county to make energy efficiency and energy cost transparent to residents in the real estate market.

We had one guy opposed, but everyone else was in favor. Let’s see if they sum it up well at KOMO News.

“Before anyone can list their home for sale, they’ll have to get a professional review of their insulation, heating and cooling systems, water heating systems, and more,” KOMO News reported.

Reduced energy use. OK? So if somebody gets the score, then they may or may not fix the house, but OK, reduced energy.

“Realtor Don Baker adds there aren’t enough energy assessors to do this work,” KOMO News reported. “In fact, the Department of Energy website shows the closest ones are near Portland. Now, cities in the county are evaluating this measure as well. The Olympia City Council is set to vote on adopting this measure next week.”

I ran the numbers, and you’re not gonna like it

OK, what are you trying to do, Thurston County? You want to save the planet? So I ran the numbers. You’re not gonna like it. But here’s the way it works.

Thurston County, 4,000 to 5,000 houses are going to be sold. The cost for each homeowner is anywhere between $150 and $360. We’ll go $350.

So then you take the number of houses sold, you take the cost of what it’s going to cost every single one of those homeowners, and it adds up to be about $1 million. The total amount of CO2 that they say this program is going to reduce — and they’re not really sure, they’re kind of guessing at it — they said, “Well, we think it’ll reduce 3,000 tons.”

So $1 million gets you a 3,000-ton reduction of CO2. Hm … everybody feel better? If the leaders of Thurston County really cared at all about money — which apparently they don’t — or CO2 — which apparently they do — they would have looked at this differently.

You take the $100,000, because they need to set up $100,000; they need your money, $100,000, to set up the program.

Now that means what? I guess, hiring somebody, or teaching somebody how to administer, that’s $100,000 the first year, just to set up the program, and you’d be better off — if you really cared about it — planting trees instead, because the trees will work out a heck of a lot better.

Trees would reduce far more CO2 for the same cost

A tree can reduce three to 10 times more CO2 than anything that they’re putting in place in this sort of thing. So Thurston County is budgeting about $25,000 a year to administer and run the program. For $25,000, you could buy yourself a whole bunch of trees and reduce a whole bunch of CO2, but they don’t really care about that. They don’t really care about the CO2 because it just looks good.

Because you could just get a whole bunch of trees, and you could reduce far more carbon, and it wouldn’t cost as much. So $25,000, which they say is going to cost every single year, to run the program, you get that in trees, you’d be able to reduce so much more of the CO2.

But again, it’s not about the CO2. It’s not about saving the Earth, Thurston County. It is about you just trying to make yourself feel good.

Let’s do a real-life example.

Here’s house number one: it’s got a 3 energy rating, which isn’t good, let’s say.

Then there’s house number two: which has a 9.

House number one is a four-bedroom, three-bath and costs $650,000. Remember, it’s got a 3 rating on it.

House number two, same thing. Four-bedroom, three-bath, and costs $650,000, but it’s got a 9 score.

A score that makes no difference to buyers

Well, which house does the buyer get? Well, according to the National Association of Realtors, they buy the one with the location that they like, with the price that they like, the home condition that they like, the lot size that they like, the school, and the outdoor space. They don’t give a rip, most of them, until you get to about number 10 on the list of energy efficiency.

So it makes no difference to the buyer whether the score is a 3 or a 9. If they want to invest in a new furnace, heat pump, or something, that’s up to the buyer. But all of this, the $100,000 to set it up, the $25,000 a year to run the program, and just the general distaste left in the taxpayers’ mouths because the Thurston County Council wants to look good.

It’s very similar to the human sacrifices that the Incas used to do, where they rip a heart out of somebody, not tearing the heart out of them, but they’re just wasting people’s time and wasting people’s money. More meaningless efforts to do absolutely nothing.

Plant a bunch of trees. You could plant about 10,000 trees. It would be a lot prettier, and it would do even more than the amount of money that they’re going to waste, forcing people to have to get some rating for their house. And most of the people won’t even care one lick about it. But the people of Thurston County Council all feel so great that they’re bringing down the Earth’s temperatures.

This post is a transcript of the video at the top of the post. It was edited for clarity.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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