Congressional allocation last year of $5 billion for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) weatherization assistance program has so far resulted in very few homes in the nation being weatherized and jobs being created, according to an interim status report by the department’s inspector general (IG).

Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, DOE received $5 billion to weatherize nearly 590,000 residences of low-income citizens — a “dramatic increase” over the $450 million appropriated for the program in fiscal year 2009. DOE awarded $4.73 billion in the form of grants to all 50 states, five territories, the District of Columbia and two Native American Tribes.

“As of February 2010, the one-year anniversary of the Recovery Act, only a small percentage of Recovery Act weatherization funds had been spent and few homes had actually been weatherized,” said the report by DOE IG Gregory H. Friedman. It was believed that the money would result in an “almost immediate creation of jobs,” but that has not occurred.

“Only two of the 10 highest funded [state] recipients completed more than 2% of the planned [weatherization] units,” it said. Ohio weatherized the most units — 6,814 — by December 2009, or 21.17% of the 32,180 units that it had planned to weatherize. It was followed by Wisconsin, which weatherized 772 units (or 3.73%) of a planned 20,678 units.

“In short, the nation has not, to date, realized the potential economic benefits of the $5 billion in Recovery Act funds allocated to the weatherization program. The job creation impact of what was considered to be one of the department’s most ‘shovel ready’ projects had not materialized. And modest income home residents have not enjoyed the significant reductions in energy consumption and improved living conditions promised as part of the massive Recovery Act weatherization effort,” the report said.

“The results of our review confirmed that as straight forward as the program may have seemed, and despite the best efforts of the department, any program with so many moving parts was extraordinarily difficult to synchronize.”

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