Assessment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Upon the Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program

Abstract

The Department of Energy (DOE) administers the national low-income Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). Under this program, DOE provides grants to states (grantees), which then provide grants to local weatherization agencies (subgrantees), to weatherize income-eligible homes for free. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 allocated $5 billion in funding to WAP, a very significant increase from an annual appropriation that ranged in the $200-250 million range for many years. As part of a major evaluation of WAP, states and local weatherization agencies were surveyed, in part, to assess their experiences during the ARRA period. The substantial funding increase created a number of issues for the national weatherization network: the political visibility of their programs increased significantly, organizational responsibilities were shifted, new laws and regulations were passed that impacted their programs, media attention of their programs increased, federal oversight of their programs increased; and programmatic costs increased because of the increased oversight and because ARRA required WAP to operate under the provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. There was some concern within the national weatherization network that the influx of ARRA funds would permanently damage nonfederal funding leveraging relationships. However, two-thirds of grantees and over 40% of subgrantees stated that they believe that the long-term impacts of ARRA on leveraging relationships will be positive.

Determinants and Evaluation of Local Energy‐Efficiency Initiatives from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

“…Some has looked at how state capacity affected funding of energy programs (Carley & Hyman, ; Terman, ; Terman & Feiock, ; Terman, Kassekert, Feiock, & Yang, ). Others focused on assessment of the experiences of a range of national actors during the ARRA period (Carley, ; Tonn, Hawkins, & Rose, ). Still others examined the effectiveness of related intergovernmental grant management or collaborative contract management (Anguelov, ; Terman et al, ).…”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: What Have We Learned?

“…All studies in this special issue, for instance, consider the context of either the state of local grant recipients. Some compare across these two units (see, e.g., Tonn, Hawkins, & Rose, 2016), while others consider the relationships between one of these units and the federal government (see, e.g., Terman et al, 2016;and Carley, 2016).…”

“…We end this special issue with two articles that are more applied, and seek to describe, analyze, and synthesize important themes that emerged from the study of the Recovery Act implementation. In "Assessment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act upon the Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program, " Tonn, Hawkins, and Rose (2016) analyze the results of a survey analysis to consider the impact of ARRA funding on the Department of Energy's (DOE) Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). Through the ARRA funding, WAP received $5 billion to use over 3 years.…”