A community-based approach to low-income residential energy efficiency participation barriers

ABSTRACT

Financial barriers are often cited as the principle impediment to the adoption of energy efficiency measures. Since 1976, the US Department of Energy's Weatherisation Assistance Programme (WAP) has provided state block grants for no-cost, low-income energy efficiency retrofits. Yet, millions of low-income American households lack affordable, reliable, and efficient energy access. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 boosted WAP's annual appropriation from $230 million to $5 billion, requiring states to explore innovate approaches to quickly increasing programme participation. Community-based energy programmes have shown success for overcoming various barriers and increasing participation in the adoption of energy technologies. This case study explores a community-based approach to scaling WAP-funded energy efficiency retrofits in a cluster of five urban, low-income, majority African-American neighbourhoods, known as the Green Impact Zone (GIZ), in Kansas City, Missouri. Findings from interviews with GIZ stakeholders suggest that local context is important to how energy efficiency participation barriers manifest. The targeted, community-based approach to WAP created institutional capabilities for increased recognition of participation challenges and facilitated opportunities for alternative solutions that may otherwise have been overlooked under the standard self-referral implementation of WAP. Lastly, effective implementation of WAP required policy workarounds that recognised the unique characteristics and needs of the target community.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy implementation
• community-based energy efficiency
• weatherisation
• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

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Corrigendum

Notes

1. The income of low-income households as provided in the 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey and adjusted for inflation was estimated at $18,773 compared to $71,755 for non-low-income households (Oak Ridge National Laboratory 2014).

2. Text from ARRA: H.R.1-32 Section 3(b) General principles concerning use of funds.

3. The GIZ, http://www.greenimpactzone.org/Plan/vision.aspx [last accessed 13/1/16].

4. According to the DOE, Missouri completed weatherisation of 20,319 homes between calendar year 2009 and 30 November 2011, http://energy.gov/downloads/arra-homes-weatherized-grantee [last accessed 13/1/16].

5. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, https://energy.mo.gov/energy/stay-informed/energize-missouri [last accessed 13/1/16].

6. The month prior to the State ending its grant contract with MARC, the DOE Inspector General's Office (DOE IG) released an audit report that found the State “had not always adequately managed its Weatherization Program and noted problems in the quality of weatherization work” and required the state to take action (DOE 2011). Across the country, states struggled to make progress with the huge increase in funding. The DOE IG found that recession-driven budget shortfalls, state hiring freezes, and state-wide planned furloughs delayed weatherization programme implementation – and created barriers to meeting spending and home weatherisation targets. The leader of a Kansas City employment agency that received stimulus funding for workforce training of GIZ workers was quoted in the local newspaper saying, “[y]ou don't create a whole industry overnight” as he discussed the difficulty of readying a new workforce in the short amount of time required for quick spending of stimulus funds (Helling 2011). In March 2012, the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform release a staff report titled “The Department of energy's Weatherization Program: Taxpayer Money Spent, Taxpayer Money Lost”, in which it cited the Missouri Audit and issues in other states it felt deemed the overall stimulus-era weatherisation programme a failure.

7. See the GIZ, www.greenimpactzone.org/images/infographic.pdf [last accessed 13/1/16].

8. The GIZ, www.greenimpactzone.org/Energy/liwap.aspx [last accessed 13/1/16].