Seizing Stimulus Opportunities

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The stimulus package is enormous — everyone agrees on that. Wednesday's Critical Issue Forum looked at the numbers.

Written by Dennis Wamsted

The Federal stimulus package has allocated significant funds to the Department of Energy to be used on a wide range of energy-related initiatives. One area that has already received funding is energy efficiency and weatherization. The majority of these funds have been given to states, counties and cities. Wednesday's 1:30 Critical Issue Forum, "Seizing Stimulus Opportunities," explored the various opportunities to utilities within the stimulus package and how they can work with their states to initiate or grow programs that specifically meet policy goals around energy efficiency.

The federal stimulus plan — all $700 billion of it — is enormous, everyone agrees on that. But when you break the numbers down, first parceling them out by activity and then by state, the dollars may not be quite as impressive as they seem.

For example, Ted Schultz, vice president of energy efficiency at Duke Energy, walked the audience through the new funding for weatherization activities made available to the state through the stimulus plan.

In all, he pointed out, the state is getting just under $132 million in new dollars for weatherization. Assuming that 25 percent of this will be used for training new installers and general administration, the state will have roughly $100 million for actual weatherization activities. With each single house costing about $6,500 to weatherize, he continued, the state will be able to retrofit some 15,400 homes with the new funding. This is certainly a good thing, Schultz said, but it is worth noting that there are 132,000 customers in Duke's territory alone that qualify for the program.

For Pacific Gas & Electric, explained Roland Risser, director of customer energy efficiency at the utility, the goal is to make sure the customers in its service territory, particularly the 71 cities that are receiving money directly from the program, understand their options for spending their new monies. To do this, he said, the utility reassigned a number of employees and developed a stimulus tool kit that could be used both internally and externally to explain the program.

An overriding concern for both utility representatives on the panel was understanding upfront what the reporting requirements are going to be for the various stimulus-related energy programs. Many, if not most, of these requirements are still up in the air, and yet the money is beginning to trickle into the different programs. It is essential, they agreed, to get the reporting requirements finalized as quickly as possible.

PG&E's Risser concluded the panel discussion with a cautionary note for all in attendance: "It is difficult to spend money well and fast," he said.