Green Jobs Philly

INSULATION FACTORY & BUYING CLUB The best fuel is less fuel. Any job done with less fuel liberates fuel for other jobs and other generations. More clean fuel can be extracted from fuel efficiency than any source.

Consuming lots of oil and electricity was long seen as essential to making big profits, but the opposite is now true. Philadelphia will progress by efficiency: making what we've already got better. New and retrofit superinsulated housing are estimated able to reduce residential heating needs over 75%. Every step in the direction of efficiency strengthens our future.

We'll need far more jobs to prepare for fuel shortages. Saving even 10% of the annual PECO bill (most of which leaves the region) would keep millions in Philadelphia to be spent with each other instead, potentially to stimulate thousands of trades jobs, craft businesses, agricultural enterprises, daycare opportunities, revolving loan funds, community land trusts, and further fuel efficiency.

Worker-controlled fuel-efficient local enterprise will create goods and homes of better quality than Americans have ever had. The Philadelphia Insulation Factory (PIF) would mix blown-in cellulose insulation from recycled newspapers with fly ash as a fire retardant. The buying club would distribute and install insulation and thermal windows at wholesale.

We have a lot of work to do: Most of Philadelphia's homes were built before the 1973 energy crisis, with very little insulation. Few constructed before 1940 were insulated. Insulation will become vastly cheaper than electricity. Some homeowners and builders have already superinsulated old units, reducing heating costs by over 80% in some cases. These are heated mainly by body warmth, stoves and appliances, after the installation of triple-pane 77777 windows, and extra-thick insulation behind an airtight liner. They are ventilated deliberately rather than randomly.

SEE: ecasavesenergy.org