On February 19th Gregory H. Freidman, Inspector General of the Department of Energy, released a report on “Progress in Implementing the Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” The goal of this program was to “improve the efficiency of nearly 590,000 residents of low income citizens.” To cover that cost $5 billion dollars was set aside in Fiscal Year 2009. Of that total $4.73 billion was made available in the form of Grants to “all 50 states, 5 territories, the District of Columbia and 2 Native American Tribes.”
As we listen to members of Congress talk about the new “jobs” Bill perhaps they need to read this report which demonstrates how inefficient the federal government performs when trying to stimulate the recovery.
As the Orange Juice blog is based in California, which had the largest number of units planned for this energy savings effort, only 12 out of 43,400 units awaiting this weatherization have been completed, representing 0.03% of the total.
Source. Department’s National Weatherization ARRA Snapshot Report dated February 16, 2010. Report link below.
Respectfully, Mr. Friedman. I would surely not label this as a “progress” report.
Note: CA received $93 million for this effort. From CalWatch:
UPDATE: Eric Alborg, a spokesman for the California Recovery Task Force, said the state has stepped up its weatherization efforts in recent months. He said 282 homes had been weatherized as of yesterday, 750 are in the process of being weatherized, and 1,300 will be ready to go soon. Full story link below.
Case in point. Reading from this U.S. Department of Energy report, the states of Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Texas, Wisconsin and the territories have one common thread. None of the 47,454 units scheduled for weatherization in these states have been completed. Does this fall under the category of “shovel ready” or simply a failure of federal/state government program management?
Note: The total number of units in this energy conservation effort is 586,015.
Larry, stop the spin. Some states have actually been active.
Fair comment. But let’s look at some of the colder climate states such as president Obama’s home state of Illinois where only 331 out of 26,933 have been completed. Another northern state that is lacking completion is Michigan where only 385 out of 33,410 have been completed.
Without boring all of us to death listing every state this report Appendix II shows that only 5.17% of the 586,015 units have been completed as of February 16, 2010.
http://orangejuiceblog.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=37840&message=10
http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/report-california-gets-93-million-weatherizes-just-12-homes
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