On Friday, the Biden administration disclosed more than $40 million in funding for the electrification and weatherization of low-income regions.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on a teleconference with reporters on Friday, “This investment addresses a key gap in government support and is just the latest action this administration is taking to cut energy prices for working families.”
Granholm noted that the $3.5 billion allocated to the department’s Weatherization Assistance Program—which she described as an increase of more than 10 times what the program typically spends over the course of a year—as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law that President Biden signed in November 2021.
She continued by saying that the extra money will help some 450,000 households afford home improvements, resulting in a yearly savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Through the department’s Enhancement and Innovation Program, $36.5 million will be distributed to community organizations, and another $5.1 million would be given to state weatherization agencies.
The awards would “turbocharge” winners’ capacity to “meet the future,” according to Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who spoke on the call. Toledo is part of Kaptur’s district, and as part of the $36.5 million grant, Neighborhood Housing Services will receive $1.9 million.
Housing is a primary focus of achieving this objective because, as Kaptur noted, “we know that 40% of America’s energy targets must be satisfied by conservation in the built environment.”
The Biden administration has promised to guarantee that 40% of environmental gains are distributed to impoverished areas. A pilot program for the so-called Justice40 initiative, which featured weatherization and resilience measures, was unveiled by the White House last year.
As the western United States grapples with an unprecedented water crisis and as persistent worries persist that Texas’s self-contained power grid’s vulnerabilities were not adequately addressed after extreme winter weather battered the state in early 2021, the impact of extreme weather on low-income and disadvantaged communities has increasingly come to the fore.
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