MANCHESTER, N.H. — Standing outside a New Hampshire home being insulated for winter, Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday that after a slow start, states are on track to weatherize 600,000 homes by March 2012.
By March 2010 — a year after the economic stimulus pumped new money into the decades-old federal Weatherization Assistance Program — fewer than 31,000 homes had been retrofitted.
But Biden said the total has now jumped to 200,000, with 80,000 homes being retrofitted this summer alone.
“We’re picking up the pace. We’re weatherizing 20,000 to 30,000 homes each month, and at that pace, we’re going to meet our goal,’’ he said.
“Investing in weatherization is a no-brainer. If we keep up the current weatherization pace, will lessen our dependence on foreign oil by 1.5 million barrels, the equivalent of going out, waving a wand, and taking 107,000 automobiles off the road permanently, and saving consumers a lot of money.’’
Biden marked the milestone at the home of Lynn Dumont, a single mother who is expected to save $600 a year once energy-saving improvements are complete on her 50-year-old ranch-style home.
“Try being a single mother raising two kids, and tell me that doesn’t make a difference to you,’’ Biden said.
Under the weatherization program, states distribute federal money to local nonprofits that hire contractors for projects ranging from installing weather-tight windows and doors to spreading insulation in homes. Making those improvements in every home would save $40 billion a year, Biden said.
“We focus on cars, as we should and we are, but homes provide, along with automobiles, the quickest, fastest savings,’’ he said.
The $5 billion weatherization program is part of about $90 billion in stimulus funds targeted for clean energy and energy-efficiency projects. Biden said it has put more than 13,000 people to work installing insulation, upgrading appliances, and improving heating and cooling systems — or about 15 percent of the 87,000 jobs the Obama administration predicts.
In March, an Associated Press review of the program found that the weatherization program had retrofitted a fraction of the homes and created far fewer construction jobs than expected in its first year. In Alaska, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia, it failed to produce a single job or help one home.
Republicans quickly reacted to Biden’s announcement with criticism that the stimulus has not created as many jobs as promised.
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