Alliance to Save Energy applauds House for including energy efficient measures in budgets

The Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) commended the U.S. House of Representatives for including investments in energy efficiency in various spending bills currently moving through Congress.

Specifically, the House Appropriations Committee is expected to consider the fiscal year 2021 energy and water appropriations bill during the week of July 13. The House Energy and Water Development bill would provide emergency funding of nearly $8 billion for the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. This includes $3 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program, $2 billion for energy efficiency grants to local governments, $1 billion for the Vehicles Technology Office, and $500 million for the Advanced Manufacturing Office.

“These bills – particularly the emergency spending – would deliver a much-needed injection of federal funding into the energy efficiency economy, which has lost nearly half a million jobs as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Ben Evans, the Alliance’s vice president of public affairs, said. “We know millions of people have lost their jobs and are struggling to pay their energy bills, and provisions in this legislation, such as the increased funding for weatherization assistance, will not only help these households permanently reduce their energy bills but also create thousands of well-paid, blue-collar jobs to do the work. Now is the time for public investment. These are bread-and-butter programs that not only drive efficiency gains across the economy but also put the U.S. in position to lead the world in developing the new technologies that will make us more productive and competitive,” Evans said.

Also, the fiscal year 2021 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill was marked up by House lawmakers on July 10. The Interior-Environment spending bill would increase the EPA’s ENERGY STAR program budget from $38.4 million to $42 million.

“ENERGY STAR isn’t just a wildly popular consumer awareness program, it serves as the foundation for hundreds of local and state efficiency programs across the country, providing critical efficiency data for everything from utility rebate programs to commercial building benchmarking,” Evans said. “We can and should be doing much more to capitalize on the success of ENERGY STAR, and this funding increase is a step in the right direction.”