Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine, revealed the details of a proposal Monday that would create jobs and help reduce energy consumption in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Sustainable Jobs Act would use federal stimulus dollars and private capital to fund projects to make homes and buildings around the state more energy efficient.

The act also aims to reduce Wisconsin’s carbon footprint and create training initiatives in energy sustainability jobs for residents.

“The Wisconsin Sustainable Jobs Act will help create a demand for skilled workers and develop career pathways for hundreds and potentially thousands of Wisconsin residents to move into family-supporting weatherization jobs,” Mason said in a statement.

The federal funds will be leveraged through a revolving loan program — which allows for more funding to become available as soon as a previous loan is paid off — and will be used to retrofit residential homes for energy efficiency.

The private capital will allow for larger-scale retrofit programs for some of the state’s largest commercial and industrial locations.

Retrofitting includes measures such as putting new installation up, fixing leaks, caulking windows and other ways to prevent homes from losing heat and raising energy costs.

Tom Eggert, director of the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council, said sustainability in business practices has become an important issue for Wisconsin recently.

“Reinvestment programs like this are excellent ways to put generally lower-economic status people who are out of work into big cities doing things that are actually good for the environment, as well as cutting energy bills for people owning homes,” Eggert said.

He added Wisconsin imports 100 percent of its energy because the state has relatively none of its own coal or natural gas.

A big issue for Gov. Jim Doyle right now is to find a way in order to keep the money we spend on energy in the state and create jobs.

“We do have wind,” Eggert said. “We’re not a great wind state, but we have enough to get things going.

Whatever we have are all things we should be looking at. These are all ways of looking at alternatives for keeping money in the state when we talk about energy dollars.”