A diverse coalition of nearly 200 business, labor, civil rights, and environmental groups have sent a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) urging her to support an important energy-efficiency provision that would:

• Generate $100 billion in electric efficiency investments;
• Create more than 900,000 new construction, energy service, and building maintenance and operations jobs by 2020, and many more additional jobs at plants that supply these sectors (based on analysis by Green Economy, 2009), and;
• Reduce consumers’ energy bills by $300 billion.

What is this magical provision? As the letter explains:

We are writing to request that the climate bill require an investment in energy efficiency equivalent to at least 1/3 of the value of the total allowance allocation given to electric utilities. Such an efficiency investment will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs retrofitting millions of buildings nationwide, and benefit consumers by lowering electricity costs by billions of dollars, as residential, commercial, and industrial consumers typically save in the range of $2 to $4 for every $1 invested in energy efficiency. It would also help decrease greenhouse gas emissions and thus reduce the market clearing price of carbon.

Following is a joint statement from the broad-based coalition:

“We believe that the adoption of an additional electric utility, energy-efficiency measure in the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act will reap tremendous benefits for our economy and consumers.

Energy efficiency is the fastest, cheapest and cleanest way to reduce our carbon pollution. We urge the Environment and Public Works Committee to act now by adopting this provision to create jobs, reduce pollution, and save consumers and businesses money.”

For more on benefits of efficiency in the climate bill, see:

• The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030
• “New EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency — plus 22 GW of extra coal retirements and no new dirty plants

This piece originally appeared on Climate Progress.

Image Credit: Campus Progress via Flickr, Creative Commons License