Summary Tax Law on Energy and Environment in Economic Stimulus Bill Signed by President Obama

Economic Stimulus Act Provides $16.8 Billion for EERE Programs

President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on Tuesday. Credit: Pete Souza, White House

President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 yesterday, and the measure includes $16.8 billion for the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The funding is a nearly tenfold increase for EERE, which received $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2008.

While the bulk of the new EERE funding is supporting direct grants and rebates, $2.5 billion will support EERE's applied research, development, and deployment activities, including $800 million for the Biomass Program, $400 million for the Geothermal Technologies Program, and $50 million for efforts to increase the energy efficiency of information and communications technologies. An additional $400 million will support efforts to add electric technologies to vehicles. And separate from the EERE budget, $400 million will support the establishment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E), an agency to support innovative energy research, modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

See the White House announcement and pages 58-60 and 63 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (PDF 13.4 MB), as well as pages 24-26 of the accompanying joint explanatory statement of the conference committee (PDF 10.3 MB). Download Adobe Reader.

The economic stimulus act also stipulates that $5 billion will go towards the Weatherization Assistance Program, and the act also increases the eligible income level under the program, increases the funding assistance level to $6,500 per home, and allows new weatherization assistance for homes that were weatherized as recently as 1994. A complementary measure in the act provides $4 billion to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to rehabilitate and retrofit public housing, including increasing the energy efficiency of units, plus an additional $510 million to do the same for homes maintained by Native American housing programs. HUD will receive an additional $250 million to increase the energy efficiency of HUD-sponsored, low-income housing.

The bill provides broad and comprehensive financial support for the bank and financial industries, including investment banking firms. It is hoped that the bill will offer financial support for the economy to avert a major financial depression in light of the negative policies of the Bush Administration, which increased military and federal spending to historic record levels while cutting taxes for the wealthiest and largest corporations.