 My name is Carol Werner. I'm the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, EESI. And I must say it is a privilege to work with the Northeast Midwest Congressional Coalition and also the Senate Coalition. And I hope that everyone really understands how deep their concern and support for this important weatherization program has been. And it is, I think, a testament to the reach of the program, the impact of the program in terms of seeing how various members of Congress have championed this enormously important program for many years, for now about 30 years. And what, as Kate was saying, what's really, really critical is that there is a very, very important success story that we wanted to be part of telling. And so we are also very glad to be partnering with regard to this briefing with the National Association for State Community Services Programs. I think what's really important for all of us to remember is, as Kate was saying, with regard to this program, we now are seeing as a result of the investment through the recovery program that there have now been a million homes that have been weatherized. That is a very, very important story and a very important success from many different levels. From the families, the households whose lives have been touched as a result of this program and being able to see their energy bills reduced, being able to live in a safer and healthier home and one that is much more energy efficient to the fact that there are now lots of people who have been trained across the country that have expertise that is now really critical with regard to the whole energy efficiency retrofit industry across the country. And in addition, we have seen the weatherization program pioneer technology that is used to both provide ever better services for the program but ever better technology that is available to the whole retrofit industry. And, of course, all of the goods and services that are made, and we're going to hear more about this from our speakers today, but it's also an important part of the success story that all of the goods and services are, in terms of that supply chain, it is coming from all over our country and that, therefore, there are many, many jobs and economic activities that are connected to this very successful story. So I want to start by introducing Mark Wolf, who is the Executive Director of the Energy Programs Consortium. And Mark has a very, very long history in terms of working with these programs and has a very, very background. And there are short bios for all of our speakers on the back of your briefing notice. And Mark has worked very, very hard to help tell these stories, and now he has also helped put together a film to help tell the story. He's going to just show some very brief clips and talk briefly about the program. Mark. Thank you. Thank you. I also represent the State Directors of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LAHI. And one thing I learned over the years is that there are many people in the Hill that think by supporting LAHI, they're also supporting the weatherization program as if it's one program. In fact, they're two separate distinct programs, and we are deeply concerned about the funding situation for weatherization. It is our companion program, and while paying the bill is important, it's also very important to weatherize and strengthen the home. Just a couple of quick facts, and I'd like to introduce our film. We started about two years ago to do about a 10-minute history of the program, and as word got around, people started sending us things, things that were in their basements, you know, early manuals, an early blower door, early equipment. And as we began to collect these very interesting, almost historical artifacts, it's 30 years now, we started to realize that, in fact, many of the people helped to start the weatherization program. We're leaving the scene. We're retiring. We're moving on. And we realize they had a very important story to tell, and that evolved into a 15-minute documentary. Now, we did, I think, hand out copies of the documentary. Lois and Barbara, I think, maybe have some extra copies over there. It's also online. The State and Local Energy Report is the magazine of the four major organizations that represent state energy officials, and they were the sponsor of the film, along with the National Association of State Community Services Programs that represents the state weatherization directors. Just a couple of key points I'd like to make about the film. We don't have time to show it today. It's 15 minutes. I'm just going to show some clips and some of the interviews that we did. But there are a couple of interesting things. About 30 years, for those of you who are old and if you remember this, and I really thought I would never be in the position of ever saying that myself, this grew out of the early days of the energy crisis. We have archival footage of Walter Cronkite talking about weatherization, Jimmy Carter, if you remember those days. And one thing that people forget, 50% of low-income families are homeowners. About 70% of all Americans are homeowners. Still many, many poor families, lower-income families own homes. And for those families, weatherization is more than just doing, you know, heating and weatherization work. And when you start to think of the kinds of things that we do, it's helping to stabilize their homes. So it's more than just furnace replacement. You're doing major important work to that house to help them stay in that home. And for them, what might appear to middle-class families as not major improvements really are significant. There are two key things that are covered in the documentary that I think are really important takeaways about weatherization. One, it created the history of building science for energy efficiency. A lot of the things that we take for common now in energy efficiency grew out of the weatherization program. We interviewed people who were early weatherizers to use that phrase. And they would say things like, well, we started with a truck and a hammer and a screwdriver. Yeah, they said, go do something with that house. And so people started to learn how do you help tighten up the house? How do you help reduce energy? And that led to things today like the more sophisticated blower doors that we have, infrared equipment to look for leaks, all of that grew out of weatherization. That also helped to develop what we now have as the Home Performance and Energy Star program, which really is a crossover from weatherization to more middle and upper middle-class homes. With that, I'd like to share just a couple of the interviews that we did for the film. These are people and companies that were weatherizing, really kind of talk about what it meant to them. I'd like to start with Carolyn Nackie, who is in Washington State and is a family that was weatherized recently and is in our film. I think this is how you do it. Oh, that's it. Yeah, there we go. And I worked in the office. My hours were cut two years ago, and it adds up. You don't have that paycheck and in older, any time in my house, no matter how much I tried, you could always feel a draft. The weatherization people came in and they put insulation in places that I never did have before. I had a gas fireplace and a gas heater. And now I feel safe and secure because I do have a reliable carbon monoxide detector that was put in. My electric bill has gone down and my gas bill has gone down since it made the changes in the insulation and the walls and everything. I feel I sleep better at night when they told me I was getting all this. I cried. I really did cry because it was a blessing. I mean, I could not believe it. It just made the world's difference to me in a comfort zone knowing that this was taken care. My home is better. I'm better. Life is better. Second short clip is Rod and Janice. It's a good example, I think, of supply chain issues. Many of the people that work in weatherization, they're not doing to become wealthy. We don't have wealthy contractors. These are people who are dedicated. People, they work really hard and the reimbursements are low. They do it because they want to help families. And this is a good example of the kinds of companies that I believe are at risk through these cutbacks. I got involved in weatherization in 1978. I started out with the Miss Valley Bank reach and eventually into my own business moved down to Washington and expanded the business to where it's at today. Once I realized the impact that I was going to have on a program I realized I wasn't going to be able to manage this business by myself. So I ended up robbing my daughter from another company. About three years ago I came on board to help manage the office side of things. It's been extremely exciting. We've increased the number of units that we've weatherized per year in the last two years. I really have felt that I've been of service. Going to people's homes that are not actually doing well and really can actually uplift their spirits when someone come in and provide this type of service for them. I think sometimes what people forget is that when you live in an area like Washington where homes can be $500,000 or $700,000 for many people who live in parts of the country where a home is $100,000. It's not a large valuable property but for them that's all they have. They don't have the money to maintain it so it gradually deteriorates. What weatherization does is help to stabilize that property. I'd like to do just two more. The good stories I think particularly filter down to the employees as well as the homeowners themselves to allow us to build jobs and thousands of people and also do something well at the same time. Most clients that we deal with have very old air conditioners and they're not very efficient at all. We've done a ladies house in the middle of the beach. It was 92 years old. We've been sleeping on the front porch for the last three months. I hadn't had air conditioner in a year and that was in the heat of August. After we left there she was teared up and that moved you. It makes you really feel happy of what you got at the house. When I first started doing inspections we had ladies who were blind. This was a final inspection regarding all the work. She was running around the house screaming happy as it could be. She couldn't see what we'd done but she could notice the difference in the house. She could feel the difference in the house. It was just crazy seeing her being so happy and knowing that she felt the difference without seeing it. It really shows that it worked. It is pushing a hundred years old. My husband has done a lot of degree modeling himself with a couple of friends. We've had a few challenges in the years that we've lived here. In the last few years it's been mainly health deterioration that has caused us not to be able to do our own work which my husband and I have always done. The work that Project Tom has done for us was remarkable because of tightening areas that we wouldn't have even expected that needed work. The floors feel much warmer. We feel less draft. Everything that they have done for me has added to my life in every aspect as far as comfort, as far as who they were. I can truly from my heart say that I have never met finer people that have been so giving up themselves. A working crew is more like family than strangers and anything that I can do to help them I would do. I'd like to finish up with a short video from the Community Development Corporation of Long Island. They do weatherization for I think most of the island. And again I think captures the sense of the dedication of the workers that are out there helping families who really have very very little other than their house. The Community Development Corporation of Long Island. I basically supervise every aspect of weatherization from the orders first coming in to our crews doing the work, to our contractors doing the work, to our final post inspections. Each home I go into basically it's kind of good because I get to see the before and after. So in each home I see the impact we make. Every house is different. You can have a house on the reservation that kind of is 200 years old. You can have a mobile home. You see everything and you see anything and it changes constantly and that's what makes the job fun. It's always been, every year, every training we go to we learn something new and it's something that you can carry over. And it's knowledge that you can use on your own home and your own life and your own family. I can see myself doing it for the rest of my life just because I'm so interested in it. I'm so happy to be helping people and I just I love the learning aspect and it's just it's been a great experience overall for the past nine years. I wouldn't change anything. Hey, lastly, if we do run out of copies of the video is also online on the state and local energy report website. Thank you. Thanks very, very much, Mark. And I hope everybody does take the time to look at the film. It's very, very moving as we just saw with regard to to these clips. And in terms of the impact on people, whether it's their homes or whether they're doing the jobs is really is really an incredible story. We're now going to hear from David Hempstahl, who is executive director for the Association for Energy Affordability. And he has, while he is located in New York, he has been working with with people in terms of being a very, very important, playing a very important role in the training and engineering services that are so critical to making motherization a success. David. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I want to also just quickly about AEA. We are a membership organization and of weatherization sub grantees in downstate New York. And we actually have eight weatherization directors from Brooklyn and Manhattan and the Bronx. Okay, in Long Island in the room with us today. Okay, raise your hands here. Weatherization agents. All right. And actually, we have a total of 12 people who are here today from from New York. And we, and I was thinking about the extent to which folks don't realize how long many of us been toiling on this weatherization front. So many people in the last few years that come up to us and basically say as Dan was just at a e-book conference this weekend and somebody, but oh, but weatherization started with error, right? Okay. Well, collectively, we have 235 years of direct service and weatherization from 12 people here. That's an average of almost 20 years that each of us has been involved. So, and let me just say that, you know, I've been directly involved in this program since 1990. Okay, personally, and the professionalism and the commitment of quality professional staff in the program in New York City has been awesome. And we're going to talk about a bit about multi family. Okay. But let me just say our perspective is we serve the people who are low income in our city. Okay. And actually, we consider downstate that's Westchester, that's Long Island, not just the five rows of New York City. And we, 8EA does energy audits. Okay. For most of those folks, although Dan Rieber is self auditing agency, some of those are. But we also are a direct services provider. Okay. And Francis Rodriguez is our weatherization director in the South Bronx and actually through a couple of contracts just under, under era. 8EA is whether I 75 buildings. Okay. With almost 5000 units under era ourselves and our energy efficiency engineers during this period have done comprehensive energy audits on over 600 buildings with. Over 42,000 units during era, we moved from an agency of 50 people to 138. Okay. We had to do that to be able to hire the professionals, the energy engineering staff to do energy audits on multi family buildings. I know it. We do a lot of training and workforce development at the beginning of era. I was, I wasn't shocked. Okay. I was a bit surprised that people really began to think of weatherization as, oh, it's weather stripping and all you need. You don't need a GED. You don't need anything. Well, my environment, we've been working in a multi family. Sure, we do a lot of workforce training that brings folks from that category into various jobs. But frankly, in our recruitment to expand our energy engineering staff for weatherization in New York. We hired a, we interviewed 104 people nationally to hire about 14 engineers. Okay. We recruited effectively, but then going back to the folks in the room. Okay. Who've been dealing with on the front lines with weatherization on an average of 20 years. And in multi family, you know, I'll get to a more later, but in the city of New York, two thirds of all people and all households live in multi family buildings. Okay. That still means we have a million households living in one to fours. Okay. But we have 2.2 million living in multi family buildings. So because there's a range of people who have a range of understanding of a few background things. This is traditionally nationally, it's a community action agencies and committee based not for profit organizations, but it's in every state. Okay. And typically this means in most of our states that means in every county, clearly in New York is rural urban. It's every single family. It's a variety of settings, but it's always targeting the most vulnerable in our society who are not themselves as likely to be able to be in a position to pay for the addressing the energy waste and the high cost of energy. Okay. The one of the things that was mentioned will be mentioned again. It's been historically true that weatherization has been an incubator for new technology. One of the key reasons, of course, is a lot of people who 30 years ago, you know, in the Carter administration first got involved in the program, you know, where folks who were trying to figure out solve problems, figure out how do we actually solve these problems. And it really has been the driver. Okay. And the fact that we've become part of it, you know, funded by the Department of Energy, it's interesting. I've always felt they've hadn't shown as adequate respect for the extent to which we are a field based R&D program. Frankly, we're out there in the field working in real conditions with strong folks. And so the policy driver for what we've been doing in terms of the new technologies always been coming up with new ways to save money for folks. And we've been very much engaged in that in the R&D side with wireless technology. We've got our own organization. We've got a 30,000 foot training center in the South Bronx. We are connected to many buildings in downstate New York, real-time monitoring temperature in apartments, okay, adjusting temperatures, managing with building operators and building operators to achieve best energy status. So, and again, historically, it's kind of hard to believe there was once an era in Washington that I grew up in coming here in Fairmont. Okay, my senator was Javits. He was a Republican. He was probably one of the more, you know, liberal senators. Okay, and weatherization program actually has been historically fully a bipartisan supported program. It's been traditionally true at every stage. A major reason is because I think, I've always thought, it's the workforce engaged and the companies doing the work were small businesses. Okay, but it was also so responsive to the districts that congressmen serve. So, one million homes, whether it's since 2009, you know, we really do have a lot to celebrate. I mean, one million homes when the president in the campaign was talking about a goal of weatherizing a million homes. You know, people including a lot of people in weatherization who nationally were getting on average 225 to 240 million dollars a year. It was kind of five billion and ramp up now from an average of 225 to 240 to five billion. Well, five billion is over three years and 250 million was over one year. And so, let's get these things lined up a bit. Okay, but one way or another, whatever way you look at, it's got to be at least four times as big overnight. Okay, but by the way, my numbers that I saw in June were 750,000, directly attributable to error. But people forget the error dollars, everybody had their demands in New York with a 2009 contract, a base contract people were working on. And New York said, hey, you can't slow down in any of that. You do the 2009 until all of this, Davis, Bacon, everything else gets sorted out. You're doing 2009 and then we're doing 2010 and we're doing 2011 contracts at the same time. Okay, all right. So, you know, looking back, a lot of us do remember that it got started in, you know, with Carter. Okay, looking back to 2009, we also, a lot of us remember this was a big challenge. Okay, but we responded. Okay. And, you know, in New York and nationally, and I'm going to get into some of the kinds of numbers here. Basically, we saw that around the country, the responses varied a heck of a lot, no question. But there's a lot of building on the existing infrastructure. Okay, one of the key things that's important to remember is there were some of us for whom weatherization actually had been a small share of the total of what we were doing in energy efficiency. In Massachusetts and Ohio and in our case in New York, actually we had more NYSERDA and utility dollars supporting what we were doing often over these years than weatherization dollars. Okay, and I think the survival of that existing network is a really critical in terms of being able to play a critical role nationally in utility programs. People don't fully realize the extent to which that infrastructure in critical places really is weatherization. Quickly give you a sense of, you know, multifamily buildings is where we primarily work. And in fact, we've got pictures of multifamily buildings around the country. We have a strong office in California as well. And just some numbers have gotten your handouts as well. You know, there's a lot more multifamily, residential multifamily housing eligible for weatherization than is often assumed. People just assume it's a single-family program. I've got some regional data, some city data, and the handout you should look at it. It's clearly Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Seattle, and Chicago all have close to half are in multi-unit buildings. We look at 10 or more that's even, you know, some places even more important. I just want to throw a few things out in terms of New York as well specifically, because we had a target of less of, I guess, 58,000 or so under-era statewide, 72,000. You know, and of that, 86% were in multifamily units. Okay. I'm basically showing data about the 9, 10, and 11 as well and the total numbers. Ultimately during that period, just as nationally, there's a million homes in New York. Actually, it's over 100,000 units during this era period that have been served. So, I mean, I've got some information on why do we do multifamily and ultimately at the end of the day, that's where most of the low-income actually live in New York City, okay? And it's critically important that we're responsive where they live. What's different about apartment buildings? Typically, not just in New York City, but many of our central city, large urban areas around the country, heat and hot water include in the rent, okay? And basically, everyone who lives in the building is paying a contribution toward that. When we're reducing operating costs, we're reducing the upward pressure on rents and preserving affordable housing. And affordable housing is a critical component of our mission, okay? Measures, I'm not going to get into, but some pictures here. We do an incredible variety of very responsive, up-to-date measures, and that's really coming from specifying audits with strong auditors. And I got to really give a shout out to DOE's stewardship, frankly, on this issue of the workforce, okay, and standard work specifications, and all that the team at DOE have been doing really incredible work and want to build on that. And so there's really not time for me to do more than be ready to respond to questions, but I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much, David. And hopefully, you all will have questions once we hear from all of our speakers. We will now hear from John Joseph. Dr. Joseph is the CEO of JII Software. He comes to us from Maine. And his company has been involved in specializing in energy auditing and weatherization program management. He also is a professor of economics, and he's a former state energy director in Maine, so he's able to weave all of that together. Dr. Joseph. Thank you. It's good to be here. I got on an airplane from Portland, Maine this morning at 6 o'clock and left my home at 4. So I'm about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. But I'm happy to be here. I went to graduate school here in Washington, D.C. at Georgetown in 1973 during the first oil embargo. And I experienced the gasoline lines and the question of whether or not I was actually going to be able to go back to Maine at Christmas time when I had a young baby at the time. So it made a very big impression on me. I went back to Maine and decided to have my career there and had the opportunity to become director of the Maine Office of Energy Resources. And you know the Chinese curse, may you have an interesting job in interesting times. I was there during the Iranian oil embargo and the Iranian Revolution. And really was touched by the importance of the energy problem to our economy. And that's what I'm going to focus on today. I am trained as an economist, but I run an IT company and we do software for the LIHEAP program and we do software for the weatherization program. The first economic aspect of weatherization that I would like to focus on is that it was part of the 1976 Energy Act and the purpose was to save energy. Why? Because the people in these homes couldn't afford to save energy. So you could have a situation where you have an excellent rate of return on investment but there's no money to invest in it. So in an economic sense there's real value there. We're enhancing the wealth of our nation by doing this. Even though the money is not coming from the homeowner, it's creating value and wealth. So from an economic point of view we're building from the ground up with this program. In Maine we did a carbon methodology so that the carbon credits from weatherization would be acceptable in a national and international voluntary carbon markets as an opportunity to bring more money into the program. So we developed this methodology which was approved by the validators and it actually resulted in a sale. We sold 80% of our ARA homes in Maine. We sold the carbon credits. So we were able to kind of meld those two things together in the fast-moving carbon ARA era. We had to prove additionality which was that these houses would not have been weatherized without the weatherization money. So we took all the bills from like 50,000 LIHEAP recipients in the state of Maine where energy builds from year to year and found that over the period of time where we were measuring the savings from weatherized homes, the other homes that we didn't put any money into had a savings rate of 0.38%, basically insignificant savings in the single family and multi-family, demonstrating that these folks don't have the resources to weatherize these homes. So I think that's the first observation I wanted to offer you. The second one is that the weatherization funding is an investment. It's not an expenditure. Now if we had Warren Buffett here, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, fundamentals of business is you can even borrow money for an investment. It makes sense. So if you want to run a government deficit and invest the money, it's logical. But borrowing money for operating expenses is a different story. And I just want to make the distinction that investment is a weatherization expenditure is an investment. It has long-lasting returns, 20 years. All the training centers that were built are an investment. The trained staff is human capital. Every task that saves energy has to have a savings to investment ratio of one, which is in the private sector is called the profitability ratio, same thing. If you can find a profitability ratio greater than one in your company, you're adding value to your company. The stockholders are going to be happy. That is the same rule that's used in what other government program has that kind of strict economic criteria associated with it. So this is an investment. Not only does it have a positive cash flow, it very likely has a growing cash flow. How many of your portfolios have a growing cash flow? How many investments do we have in America right now that we can validate the cash flow and know it's there and measure it and count on it and expect it to go up as the price of energy goes up in the future, which none of us know the future. But if you want to take bets, I'm holding a little session back here a little bit later and we can do that. So WAP is not a cost center. It's an investment center. There's a whole supply chain associated with this. And I was asked to focus on this because I'm in the supply chain, but I'm in the technology side of it. We're not a weatherization contractor, but we're bringing IT technology improvements to the weatherization process. That's the new innovation. This sector is large. It's been documented by a study that was done by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Ertus Orlando, and it's called the Energy Efficiency Service Sector, of which weatherization is a small part because it has all the utility programs and private auditors, et cetera, et cetera, construction contractors that are doing industrial projects, anything around energy efficiencies in here. So we're a small part of that, but we're a very important part of that. Where the foundation, when I say we, I mean the weatherization program is the foundation of that national energy efficiency system in the sense that it's national in scope. It has an integrated network which includes every state, the territories, the tribal organization, all these community-based organizations and a huge cadre of private companies. I mean just the infrastructure of all that is incredibly valuable. We cannot let that fall apart. We've done the training in this program, developed the standards. I know there's BPI and there's all these private groups, but if you go back and scratch the surface, you're going to find that BPI guy once worked in a weatherization program. And weatherization has been said before, and I guess I'm repeating a little bit of this, but it has been a catalyst for innovation in residential weatherization. All the energy modeling, the stuff that we do comes out of the weatherization program. The blow-a-door test that measures infiltration comes out of the weatherization program. The infrared cameras come out of the weatherization program. The idea of adding health and safety considerations to the home comes out of the residential program and the training and certification. So all of the professional infrastructure comes from the weatherization program. Weatherizations can continue to be a catalyst and I'm going to focus a little bit on the aspect that we're involved in. Our software is improving the monitoring and inspection process. All the data is in one place. The data is going to be uploaded into a computer model that makes it suitable for selling in the carbon market. We've improved the accuracy of these energy audits. We've gone through the latest DOE review for accuracy of audits and all the audits were overestimating savings and we all know that. So I think now we're tightening that up. We're getting really serious about what's all the calculations. Here's another innovation in weatherization that many of you might not be aware of, but under NASCAS, the weatherization plus health and safety has become a new focal point. I heard an interesting talk at the last conference where they were talking about finding asthma triggers in homes and measuring the CO2 emissions and unsafe structures and fire protection. My question is what is the economics of all that? If you take a young child and get rid of the asthma trigger in the home and he doesn't go to the hospital, how many times have you paid for that inspection? And if you prevent a fire, how many times have you paid for that fire prevention? And if you eliminate carbon monoxide and save a life, what is the worth of that? These are real economic savings and these people are out in the homes now doing the health and safety. So that could be integrated with other governmental services for health and safety in these homes. And other than the economics of energy, the number one economic problem we have in this country is the health care costs. And this program is contributing to reducing health care costs. It may not be controlling prices in hospitals, but it's keeping people out of hospitals. And it may not be enormous, but it's one step at a time, isn't it really? And when I talk about this program being a catalyst, I just want to remind us all that this idea of a government program being a catalyst for private development has been around for a long time. And those that think that the government doesn't play a role are not reading history because the computer comes from the U.S. Navy. The satellites come from NASA, all your cell phones. Radar research developed the television and the Air Force developed the wide-body jet, which brought me here this morning at 4 o'clock. You know, the network is huge. The small business contractors, I heard one of them, Hawkeye Construction out of Baltimore. During our, they hired 40 people and God bless them. And here's the good example of the value chain. Program director, staff employee at Home Depot and two energy auditors. Thank you. Thank you very, very much, John. We are now going to turn to Richard Keperton, who is the director of Clean Energy Investment with the Center for American Progress Action Fund. And he's going to talk about supply chain and a new issue brief that the center is just releasing today. Thank you, Carol, and thanks to ESI for doing this among your other great projects. This is a great organization. It's good to be here speaking at one of your events. Again, my name is Richard Keperton. I work at a nonprofit think tank, nonpartisan think tank here in Washington, D.C., called the Center for American Progress. And we've released a new paper today. It's called the Federal Weatherization Program as a winner on all counts. I've got two of my co-authors on the paper, Adam James and Matt Casper with me today, for their help. I want to talk a little bit about that paper, but before I do that, frankly, I think some of the paper may be a little bit dull compared to what we've heard today and what we've seen in this video and what we've heard of the benefits of the program. I think if you think of just the energy savings in a house that's a little bit short-sighted. If you just think about the supply chain and some of the companies in the supply chain that's a little bit short-sighted. I think if you think about improving comfort in people's lives, that's what this program is about. And it's about making people's lives and making people's homes better. So let's just put that context out there that what I'm talking about here is not the whole story. The whole story is improving people's lives. Our paper is about this, that energy efficiency is a win-win-win for Americans. Saves homeowners money. I'll talk a little bit about that. Put some facts on that. Put some Americans back to work. I'm going to focus on the manufacturing sector, how it employs people throughout the supply chain, as we've heard. And I think it's important not to disregard the fact that this helps avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. So first, weatherization, it actually does save people money. Let's not forget that. It helps families save more than $400 on heating and cooling bills in the first year. This data from the entire history of the weatherization program reduces homeowners' energy consumption by 35%. That's real savings. And in 2010 alone, families combined saved $2.1 billion. Those are real, again, add on all the other benefits of just improving people's comfort zone in their house that we heard about. Those are significant savings. And the thing is that these are real savings for people who need it. Low-income families benefit from weatherization. And this is just the criteria of the program that any household at or below 200% of the poverty line qualifies to apply. And you get a huge number of households that meet that bare minimum standard. And in that number of $38 million, we give priority to families with children and homeowners who are elderly or disabled. These are very vulnerable people who need the assistance. Now, these people, they're not just located in certain states and certain parts of the country. They're located all across the country. And weatherization funds flow all across the country. Of course, a state like California actually does get a lot of money. In New York, it's a huge amount of money from WAP. This does it on a per capita basis so that the states with extremely high weatherization needs, Maine, North Dakota, South Dakota are going to be the primary beneficiaries on a per capita basis. And then you're more... Your states would just less need Florida a temperate climate like California have less for this program. Now, this is data that comes up to, I think, 2010. It's very possible that as we learn more about the needs for cooling in hot weather climates as the effects of climate change become worse and cooling needs just become higher across the country, that these places in the Sun Belt are going to need more weatherization on a per capita basis. So I would not be surprised to see those numbers change a little bit in the future. Now, in addition to benefiting the people in their homes, it's important to think about the supply chain. This is some data that comes from the Home Performance Resource Center and they've done a pretty neat study looking at how much of the materials used in retrofits are made in America and find that on the average it's 89% of the things are manufactured here. Now, the way they did this was they looked at NAICS codes and just found how big the industry, for say, duct sheet metal is in the United States and then looked at some tariff databases and found out how much we were importing of that and the remainder was manufactured here. So, 99.4% of duct sheet metal that we use in weatherization is manufactured here in the United States. 95.9% of rigid foam insulation. Everything is a very good. Refrigerators are not on this chart. Those are the lowest manufacturing percentage in the U.S. at something like 62%. But everything else is very, very good. And again, that 89% number compares very favorably to the average, the bottom right here is the average for all manufactured goods across the economy, which is 76.5%. So clearly, weatherization has a better economic impact than a lot of other investments you could make in the manufacturing sector. Finally, every house that's weatherized reduces carbon dioxide by 2.65 metric tons a year. And in the power sector we emitted about 2 billion metric tons of carbon last year. But we've weatherized 2 million homes so that's getting to be a significant impact on the power sector emissions. If we weatherized a lot more homes obviously the impact would be bigger but these numbers add up relatively quickly and you're starting to make a real impact on avoiding the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. And over the life of the measures again we're saving 53 metric tons of CO2 per house. So, I want to thank you again for inviting me. This has just been a brief summary. We've got our paper. I think it's on the table outside as you leave if you didn't pick it up on the way in. I encourage you to. It's also our website, AmericanProgress.org. And I'm also always happy to come and meet with anybody on the hill and talk about these issues or off the hill. Feel free to get in touch with my contact information and send the handouts that are there. But thanks again to EESI and thanks for all of your hard work on this program. Thanks very much, Rich. And our final speaker, before we open it up for your questions and comments is Brad Pieny, who is the General Counsel with Advocates for the Other America. And he will sort of sum up kind of the whole thing in context because as you can hear from what everybody has said, the weatherization program reaches into people's lives in so many different ways and all across the country is a very compelling story, Brad. Carol, thank you very much. And let me just add to what the other speakers have said, our appreciation at NASCASP and Advocates for your great work in putting this briefing together. And we're particularly proud those of us who are involved with the program that we can do this on the day or day after the one millionth home was weatherized. So we quickly want to get into questions. You've been a very patient audience. This has been a great briefing and a lot of questions. But what I'd like to do is having heard of the great successes of this program and the tremendous contribution it makes not only to those who benefit from having their homes weatherized but as we've heard to our economy and to reducing the carbon footprint. I now have the difficult task of kind of telling you the very grim facts on the future of the program because sadly, despite everything we've heard here this morning, the technology benefits, everything else that our wonderful speakers have projected here today, we are here this morning asking for your help at a point at which the future of the program is gravely jeopardized. So as you've heard and Kate gave a very nice kind of overview at the beginning of the numbers, weatherization in the pre-recovery act years was essentially as Dave said in the range of about $205 million annually to $240 million varied but in the 5 to 7 years before the recovery act that was the average. So then we had the surge of funding, the $5 billion and it's our view at NASCAR has been advocates that I think that everyone involved with the program, the Department of Energy just a really superlative job at the point where we are today of having weatherized one million homes that is an incredible accomplishment given some of the obstacles that the program confronted at the beginning of the recovery act. One obstacle that became apparent as we reached the peak of the stimulus funding was that there was going to come a point at which there would be a lot of weatherization money in the pipeline, unspent recovery act dollars in need for new program year funding for weatherization and that year was fiscal year 12 and the program received only $68 million and the reason Congress did that was because at that point and depending on what point in time you look at there may have been something in the range of 700 million to 800 million in unexpended recovery act dollars in the pipeline. Well that was fiscal year 12 where we now have been caught in a really dangerous bind for the program going forward is that with regard to fiscal year 13 we're now operating under a continuing resolution for the first six months of the year and that is as CRs are it's a continuation of funding at last year's level. There is a 6 tenths of 1 percent increase which is a day minimus across the board increase in discretionary spending essentially right now weatherization is at that CR level but it's not even 68 million because the Department of Energy two things, two factors, they've been directed by OMB to spend out only at a rate of 28 percent for all EER programs 28 percent of the FY 12 level and the department also because they have to do this in a CR situation they take the lower of the two numbers as Kate mentioned 24 million is the house appropriations committee number for weatherization and FY 13 145 million is the senate number DOE has to take the lower of the two unfortunately so when they take out the money for the training and administrative side of the program that leaves only 51 million dollars in the continuing resolution for FY 13 so where do we need your help we need a national movement to save the weatherization program that's what we want to ask you to join us in doing here today weatherization works we've seen that in this briefing we've heard from our speakers what we need is a national coalition we need the supply chain companies we need the private sector we need the companies that have created real new jobs and have helped people to improve their economic situation we need the supportive faith based on the number of whom we have reached out to we need unified action from every stakeholder in this room and in this country who cares about the future of the weatherization program because if we do not have this national movement to save weatherization I fear that we will be caught despite the successes which you've heard here this morning I'm afraid we'll be caught in this budget cutting frenzy because we haven't even talked about the prospect of the pre-recovery act which would be another 8.2% off of the $51 million if sequestration happens we have not talked about the importance of the FY14 budget which is critical if we cannot get the administration to propose funding that is back to the pre-recovery act levels which remember we said was kind of the range of 205 million to 240 million if we cannot get back we are not going to have a national weatherization program going forward because if you look at the numbers the continuation at the spending level contained in the continuing resolution Hawaii is going to be weatherizing seven homes in the 2013 program year Delaware is going to be weatherizing something like 24 homes so you go state by state and it is really staggering and while many states do have LIHEAP as Mark mentioned and there is leveraging opportunities with utilities there are states like Missouri that does not have any LIHEAP money so they are not going to have a program at the funding levels that we are getting right now from the Congress so I would like to just make two or three points because we do want to get to the questions the first is we need your help right away to support an ask of no less than 210 million fiscal year 2014 that is going to be crucial to the survival of the program the OMB pass backs for those of you who are familiar with the budget process the time between now and November irrespective of the election this process is going forward and that time is really crucial so we would ask each of you to reach out to your congressman and senators and urge them to support as one of our speakers said weatherization has always been viewed with bipartisan support and we need to continue that and we need to have members on both sides supporting the request for no less than 210 million in fiscal year 14 it is absolutely critical that we return the program to the pre-Ara levels of funding the second thing where we need your help is that when we get to the next on March 27 at that point we will be past the fiscal cliff we'll know what's happened or not happened with sequestration we're going to need your help to plus up the weatherization account either in a second continuing resolution or in an omnibus as you know if the congress does what they're supposed to be doing they will pass an energy and water appropriations bill hopefully we will get the senate number we're going to work with our champions we're here from office of senator coons who's been so supportive of the weatherization program senator jack reed of road island senator sherrod brown of ohio we have a tremendous group of champions steve israel in the house the members of the se ec and kates northeast midwest coalition but we need really your voices those of you who are in the room today you care about the program we're here to tell you today that it's a future is jeopardized without a real national movement we need to make some noise we need to convince members of congress and the administration that people care about this program and that we are going to fight for its survival I'd like to introduce you to my colleague my friend and colleague arlie johnson in the back we work together on weatherization arlie is the executive director of advocates and you know we're lobbying on the hill every day for the weatherization program please contact either one of us and we'll be glad to work directly with you to get you engaged in trying to save the appropriations for this program and again carol our appreciation to you for providing this venue today thank you well let's open it up for your questions and comments do we have any it's your chance to hear from some very very good speakers and folks who have put a lot of time and effort into this and it's my understanding also that basically the program money that you mentioned that had been in the pipeline say six months ago or whatever like that that basically by the we are now looking at most states having spent out all of that money by the end of this year and certainly by the beginning of the weatherization program year the first of April Carol that is correct we've done an analysis with Bob Adams DOE and basically all of the recovery act dollars will be spent out the exception of two states and one territory total of 59 grantees in the weatherization program and by the beginning of the weatherization 2013 program year which is April 1 for most states but two states in one territory the recovery act dollars will be 100% spent out in fact by the end of this calendar year December 31st 40 states will have spent out 100% of their recovery act dollars there are actually two states right now Minnesota and Vermont that are out of both recovery act dollars and regular appropriations there are two sources of funding for the states right now the remaining recovery act dollars and the regular appropriations from FY 11 Minnesota and Vermont will be living on LIHEAP and leveraged funds, utilities until we get to another continuing resolution because they are sadly both out of funding and we're going to see more states as we get to the end of the continuing resolution fall in that category Hi, Matt Defranti with Rebuilding Together I understand that DOE is doing a process for sort of standardizing certifications for weatherization workers can one of you talk a little to that well I'm also a BPI Board Chair so I've been very much involved in that process of sort of monitoring what's going on there I think the it's an ambitious effort that DOE has taken on and there are four key certifications on small size, the focus the energy auditor and crew chief and inspector and installer those four and it's a very positive process from my perspective the timing given what we're just hearing is it's disconcerting if we're not able to have a $240 million or at least something in that range a funding level because in fact all everybody who's been in the program for years incompetent to build past those tests will be lost to the industry okay if state after state has no money and runs out of money by the time all that is rolling out over the next year I mean the pilot process in each of those four certifications is taking place right now so just the timing of this is a beautiful initiative but it's coming to this point in time just as we may be having people just cast to the winds so going back to the point here we can't assume that everybody will stay in place I remember the days in 1994 when we had a 57% national cut and the 94-95 era New York happened to have a strong director who was looking at LIHEAP and all this was able to have a transition plan so the cut didn't affect people, it was transition over time and people could manage that and the environment we're talking about here is that by next year we'll have maybe the home performance contractor network, maybe a contractor network will be able to take full advantage of it but weatherization folks may not and so it's a wonderful effort, it's been successful but it's moving at a pace that is exactly not lining up with with the funding cycle there was a question you've mentioned that this is can be looked at as an investment and one of the slides showed how weatherization could save on energy subsidies I was wondering if there's any economic analysis as to whether weatherization can be effectively paid for in savings to LIHEAP or other expenditures and if so over what period of time well the average LIHEAP benefit is probably around $400 and I heard today that the average savings from a weatherization project is probably around $400 but that keeps saving a weatherization investment keeps saving year after year after year you've got cash you've got to get that next year's cash and the next year's cash and I think the LIHEAP payments also that are made very greatly from state to state depending upon the number of people that apply for the program and what those allocations are absolutely should add by the way that in New York we've had between 60 and 80% of our weatherization program funding has actually come from LIHEAP and many states do a requirement of a percentage of LIHEAP goes to the long-term investment in energy efficiency which states have found more proactive more productive way but again that is frankly challenged as the weatherization program if there's no match to match no program to match it's not going to be LIHEAP funded solely we run by the in New York for the last 20 years and run according to the weatherization DOE guidelines not LIHEAP using LIHEAP dollars as per federal statute allowing it to be done according to the weatherization guidelines so just as utility dollars are affected by very much LIHEAP dollars are in many of the states that use the two in conjunction with each other will be also at risk other questions alright okay go ahead hi I was wondering if there's been an estimate on any job losses or a decrease in weatherization houses without the funding there's any figures for that develops any numbers of projected either you know the rate of layoffs or the are you want to speak to that number of jobs nationwide weatherization is estimated about 25,000 pre-HARA 15,000 jobs were added in just weatherization workers along the morning hour so those 15,000 go away but then additional 25,000 are at risk that's just the direct jobs in the state and crews that's not counting all the contractors who have also had supply chain we don't have those numbers we should do some work to try to get them frankly and it is a challenging environment when we know we added 1,400 jobs in New York but that's directly available to ERA but the supply chain those contractors I mean we deal with those contractors and they're all being affected they're small on average they're small businessmen who are very much affected by the cash flow is affected it'll be the same thing at the manufacturing level too and you could very well if you have on again off again funding you could end up with an industry that looks like the wind industry which has gone they're doing much better now but has lower and then the weatherization industry has and that's because there hasn't been stable demand every year for the last 30 years I think I could speak to that a little bit I'm Dan Reber from the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation in New York City if the doom and gloom appears to stay in place then our program would be looking at losing anywhere from 3 to 4 staff members 3 of which were hired for ERA so if my agency loses 3 or 4 people and there are 900 plus sub grantees in the nation and anywhere from 1 to 4 of those sub grantees could lose somebody and so if you do the math just at the local sub grantee level you would lose jobs and then just as was said before there's the contractors who would not be getting work because of the reduced funding the manufacturers who don't supply the materials that get installed in people's homes the people who don't save money the low income people who don't save the money who then are either deciding whether to eat or eat that's the message we need to take to the Hill thank you for stating that you stated the case very very well that's what members of congress respond to and we're going to be doing lobby days as we go through the next 3 or 4 months we'll ask you guys to come back down on that because that jobs message that's what's going to save this program if we can get that through to the members yes sir my name is Juan Del Riz and I'm from the Bedford Stuyves Restoration Corporation in Brooklyn one of the oldest community development corporation in the country it's been bothering me for maybe the second year in our and we all would agree that employment job is very important our presidents are stomping through the country talking about employment people who don't have jobs but first of all I think the numbers are wrong because with all the all the materials that we use from the manufacturers for instance refrigerators they had to put on more people to make all those refrigerators that we have behind and put in these people homes the other materials from the factories and right now the cooling program ain't no way in the hell we would buy all the air conditioners put in their homes that we are installing because we've been getting 400 calls a day or more than that and so people had too high ammo people to do this work and I think we've got some of our numbers lost have not been mentioned by people just to add one thing and that is the contractors nationally in terms of this whole notion of the supply chain a very large percentage of all weatherization work actually is done by subcontractors and those are procurement terms that are developed state by state but ultimately it's subcontractors doing the work I mean there's a fair number in some states there's work done by crew it really is not just the numbers that Dan mentioned of the people working for the agency but literally the subcontractors doing all the work and if that work is not being funded this way those folks will lose their jobs and I think that analysis of all of the people in that chain of the number of jobs there that has not been part of era reporting no matter how well era reporting has been put in place it could not track the supplier effect and the economy and all the jobs affected by the work that's been done with 5 billion dollars I think it's important and clearly one of the things that we were hoping that people would come away with today is a little bit better understanding of how complex this story really is because it not only accomplished its mission of going out and weatherizing a lot of homes but as a result of that we saw something else also really happen in terms of the training of the development of that human infrastructure which is so critical to providing the kinds of skills and people infrastructure that we really need in terms of thinking about all of the things that need to be done with our buildings across the country and that that is an enormous achievement what we've also been hearing about supply chain that it's not just kind of one one program here it is how it has really affected so much other things and that therefore there are so many businesses and manufacturing companies etc that are all part of this whole story and I'm not sure how many of us really knew how big this whole story was going to be I think it's a pretty incredible story and that and that it's a wonderful success it would be a shame now not to be able to truly capitalize on this investment for the country in terms of looking at providing a bright future for households and for people looking for for solid jobs making a real difference in American homes and buildings across the country so I want to thank you all very very much for being here today I want to thank our speakers we have a last word over here we were talking about how many people but I think it might be good to add to the dialogue is who the people are because a lot of the people who work with these contractors are not very highly educated and that's where the high unemployment rate is so it's the people who are in that category with the higher unemployment rates and veterans that taking these jobs I was struck by that young man who said had been in the field for eight years and really liked making people's home better but he liked learning I mean that's the guy who probably never graduated from I shouldn't say that but that young man who was at that age saying I like learning and there's a lot of dynamic and richness in knowing who these people are as well as how many of them I have to try to just add one thing with these last few comments we've done the last three years a lot of workforce development training and I have to say that and we've actually ended up hiring an awful lot of people through that process but the amazing thing is the diversity of the unemployed coming to us long term unemployed coming to us for training a lot of those become career switchers a lot of those weren't just the persons who didn't have the high school diploma a lot of those were persons who had been laid off in their 30's or 40's and have had difficulty getting a job but the passion because we've had a really interesting energy efficiency technician program where we've really been introducing people a whole series of possible jobs in the field but we really have gotten them sort of committed to working in sort of green industry and believe it or not in this society today we have an amazing readiness of people to really jump in and get passionately committed to this field the notion that we could be as we have more and more people introduced to the green jobs and the potential in the industry to shut down in fact defund the infrastructure that has been the historic base for all of this it's just astonishing so your call for this national coalition we jump on board oh we're getting that well he didn't learn he still wants to be learning we all learn more after college than we do in Wayne College don't we he came to this field so he came to my college and he loves it so it's actually a wonderful wonderful story in itself so I want to thank you all very very much for being here please feel free to follow up with any of the speakers please watch Mark's the film that Mark is distributing I think because we must remember this very very important human face and everything that has been accomplished thank you all very very much