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

Journal Article · Tue Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 2016 · Review of Policy Research

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/ropr.12164· OSTI ID:1393893

Tonn, Bruce ^[1]; Hawkins, Beth ^[1]; Rose, Erin ^[2]

---

1. Three, Inc., Knoxville, TN (United States)
2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Environmental Sciences Division

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. Furthermore, 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 also 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.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1393893
• Journal Information: Review of Policy Research, Journal Name: Review of Policy Research Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 33; ISSN 1541-132X
• Publisher: Wiley
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
United States)
civil society
energy
governance
low-income weatherization
national governance