Green New Deal: ‘Upgrade or Replace Every Building in U.S.’ Within 10 Years

Progressive Democrats will call for every building in the United States to be upgraded or replaced as part of its soon-to-be-unveiled “Green New Deal,” an outline of the proposal reads.

In a press conference Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) will detail their ten-year plan to tackle “climate change,” which they claim would require the elimination “pollution and greenhouse gas emissions” to meet “100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”

The plan calls for the “national mobilization” of the economy through 14 “infrastructure and industrial” projects. To meet the country’s power demands through “clean and renewable energy sources,” an FAQ says the country will need to “upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates that there are approximately 138 million housing units in the United States, and the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) estimates that as of 2012, there were 5.6 million commercial buildings. There are 5.256 million minutes in a span of ten years — which would mean at least 27 buildings would need to be “upgraded or replaced” every minute of the decade.

The proposal is already receiving the cold shoulder from leading Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). On Wednesday, the speaker signaled the soon-to-be-created select committee on climate change will not be tasked with writing legislation around the “New Green Deal” — a big blow to plan’s proponents. “’Green New Deal’ is not in the cards. It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive,” she told Politico. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

In a statement announcing the outline, Ocasio-Cortez claimed the “Green New Deal” would be paid for “the same way we paid for the original New Deal, World War II, the bank bailouts, tax cuts for the rich and decades of war — with public money appropriated by Congress.”

She did not say how much the proposal would tax U.S. taxpayers.