[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 64 (Tuesday, April 26, 2016)] [Senate] [Pages S2450-S2451] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] AMENDMENT NO. 3202 TO THE ENERGY POLICY MODERNIZATION BILL Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am very pleased with the Senate's show of support for the Isakson-Bennet amendment, which was a modified version of the Sensible Accounting to Value Energy Act. We have been working on this bill together for more than five years. The SAVE Act simply creates a voluntary program to encourage people to include energy efficiency in the purchase price of a new or existing home. It allows sellers the option of providing a HUD-qualified energy efficiency report to prospective buyers who are applying for a home mortgage. If that loan is backed by FHA, the energy efficiency of the home and the cost of a borrower's future energy bills will be taken into account by the mortgage lender. Builders and manufacturers are constantly creating new energy efficient products and features, but the enhanced value and energy savings achieved by these innovations are not fully realized by the market. The passage of this amendment will for the first time provide a mechanism to account for those saving and unlock demand for new energy efficient products [[Page S2451]] and significantly reduce homeowner's utility bills. Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question? I would like to commend my colleagues for their support for energy efficiency programs that reduce residential energy consumption. Expanding the use of these technologies in our everyday lives is a commitment to our future and will create jobs in Ohio. However, I am also concerned that adjusting underwriting or appraisal requirements without sufficient protections to ensure a family has the ability to repay their loan could have unintended consequences that put our housing market at risk, which I know is not the intention of the sponsors. Mr. REED. Mr. President, I would like to associate myself with the comments made by the Senator from Ohio. I also support the need for greater energy efficiency and applaud the sponsors of this amendment for promoting greater energy efficiency. At the same time, I do have some concerns. Specifically, I am concerned about whether and how potential energy savings can safely be incorporated as part of the mortgage underwriting process at the FHA, especially when there may not be a consensus on how to define and accurately quantify future energy savings. Another concern is the interaction of estimated energy savings in the underwriting and appraisal processes. This could happen because the SAVE Act requires expected energy cost savings to be used as an offset to certain regular expenses, such as property taxes, while also requiring the estimated energy savings of a home to be added to the home's appraisal. While not the intent of the authors, I am concerned that this could tilt the mortgage market towards more expensive products without adequate safeguards to protect borrowers. Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, we would ask the sponsors of this amendment to work with us to ensure that we can accomplish our shared goals of encouraging investment in energy efficient homes while also maintaining a safe and sound mortgage market for homebuyers. Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, moving forward, we intend to work with the Senate Banking Committee and HUD to address any technical or substantive concerns that have arisen. Specifically, it is our intention to ensure that FHA has the ability to insure loans for energy efficient homes while also including protections to maintain accurate evaluations of a borrower's ability to repay. Additionally, as this amendment is being implemented, we understand that HUD's ability to test and modify the savings that may be counted should be considered. In fact, we considered these concerns while drafting this legislation. The methodology we included for measuring energy efficient savings is an ANSI certified standard and the most widely accepted technology in today's marketplace. Over 1 million homes have already been energy rated using this technology. And this is the same underlying technology successfully utilized by the EPA's Energy Star program. Again, we are pleased that the Senate passed our amendment, and we look forward to working with the Banking Committee and HUD on improvements. ____________________