Nation/World

This weatherization program is ‘vital’ to Alaska, Murkowski says. The Trump administration proposed eliminating it.

Over the weekend, as temperatures dropped below zero across swaths of the eastern United States, another zeroing-out – this one suggested by President Donald Trump – came into cold, stark relief.

Among the several energy and environmental initiatives the Trump administration proposed to eliminate in its 2018 budget proposal was an Energy Department grant program that helped low-income homeowners make their houses more energy efficient, saving them money on their heat, electricity and health-care bills.

The Weatherization Assistance Program, which grants states funds to pay for the insulation of homes against winter weather, is designed to let poor homeowners withstand the brutal winter temperatures such as those since the beginning of the year.

The freezing weather – inclement even for hardy New Englanders as Arctic air, perhaps due to climate change, is drawn southward across North America – has renewed calls from WAP supporters for the program to remain.

"We are witnessing the triple whammy of plunging temperatures, rising heating costs, and the Trump administration's push to eliminate the low-income home weatherization program," said Dan Reicher, a former Energy Department official under Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton who plans to testify about the program in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday. "This is a dangerous situation for poor people in our country."

Making homes use heat more efficiently – by deploying powerful fans to depressurize homes to discover and plug spots where cold outside air can seep in – has become a popular way for homeowners to retain heat and energy savings during winter months while reducing the emissions of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

"What's frustrating is that a decent amount of the heat that folks are paying for is leaking straight to the outdoors," said Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a research and lobbying group that advocates for energy-efficiency programs. "If you step back and think about it, it just doesn't make sense."

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After receiving a $5 billion injection of funding in the 2009 economic stimulus, the WAP program weatherized 340,000 homes in 2010 alone, according to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which reviewed the program that year. The effort translates to $1.1 billion in household savings and 7.3 million metric tons of avoided greenhouse gas emissions.

WAP generally enjoys bipartisan support, with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, calling the program "vital funding to Alaska" and introducing a bill last year with her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Maria Cantwell, Washington, to reauthorize it. A group of Democratic and Republican attorneys general from 14 states wrote a letter to Congress in support of the program as well.

But the Trump administration's budget proposal, released last year, zeroed out Energy Department funding for the program in an effort to reduce "federal intervention in state-level energy policy and implementation," according to the budget.

There are those in Congress, too, who viewed the program as bloated after the economic stimulus, a sentiment bolstered by a finding from the Energy Department's inspector general that despite being flush with funds, "grantees had made little progress in weatherizing homes" with the stimulus money.

In 2011, Todd Young, then a freshman GOP House member from Indiana who is now serving in the Senate, introduced an amendment that sought to return the program to pre-stimulus levels, which passed unanimously by a voice vote in the House.

"Senator Young believes that every government program should be scrutinized for its effectiveness and every dollar wasted on inefficiency means less assistance for families in need," a Young spokesperson said in a statement.

But so far, Congress has been unwilling to drive the budgetary ax into the WAP as deeply as the White House wishes. For Fiscal Year 2018, the House requested $225 million in WAP funding while the Senate asked for $215 million. Both figures are roughly in line with the $230 million Obama requested in his last budget proposal. The Trump budget also targeted another assistance program for home heating, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, for elimination, but that too was funded by lawmakers.

We also don't know the fate of the program in the 2019 Trump budget proposal, coming soon, and it is unclear, after this frigid winter, whether he will ask to do so again. Presidents sometimes target programs like this to make budget numbers look better knowing full well Congress will add funding back in.

Concern has grown that the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda may target energy efficiency programs at the Energy Department.

Pushing the department's appliance standards program (think: more energy-efficient refrigerators and dishwashers) into overdrive as part of its climate agenda, the Obama administration finalized more than 40 new standards. But the Trump team has frozen those rules that failed to be finalized.

Meanwhile, Trump officials at the Energy Department have changed little in the program's day-to-day operations, according to Dave Rinebolt, who until the end of last year was the WAP's program director.

"They stayed out of our way," Rinebolt said in an interview. "This program is very well supported in Congress."

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