This week’s Forefront story discusses the latest developments in the movement to retrofit homes from Seattle to Philadelphia. As writer Chris Bentley reports, fueling much of the action is $5 billion in Recovery Act spending allocated in early 2009 to improve the energy efficiency of modest-income homes through retrofits and appliance upgrades. The Obama administration’s goal with this Weatherization Assistance Program was to weatherize 788,000 homes across all 50 states and U.S. territories.
Mouse over the map below to see how the results stack up. Our map shows the cumulative number of weatherized homes in each state from the beginning of 2009 to November 30, 2011, when the Department of Energy announced that the program had surpassed its initial goal. Texas, California and New York were the biggest recipients of weatherization funds, with more than 40,000 homes retrofitted in each state. More than 150,000 additional homes were weatherized in total throughout Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Graphic created by Stephen Kennedy