Federal housing block grants may be an untapped tool for energy-efficiency policy. EPIcenter affiliate Omar Asensio and his coauthors Churkina, Rafter and O’Hare (Georgia Tech, Harvard Business School and Georgia State University) link 5.9 million monthly utility bills with 16 years of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME Investment Partnerships projects in Albany, GA to test whether capital repairs for income-qualified homes cut power use.
Using genetic matching and staggered difference-in-differences, the study finds average electricity savings of 5 – 11 % (4.72 M kWh) across 549 projects. Energy-targeted activities perform best: Rental Rehabilitation saves 32 %, Energy Efficiency retrofits 13 %, Emergency Repairs 6 %, and Homeowner Rehabilitation 11 %. These cuts translate into $75 – $482 in annual bill relief per household—roughly two months of groceries in Southwest Georgia.
Scenario analysis shows cost-effectiveness varies sharply by project: Rental Rehabilitation delivers 83.5 kWh per 2021 $, nearly three times the 29 kWh/$ median for utility retrofit programmes. Even the least efficient housing intervention (0.8 kWh/$) is within the range of established LMI weatherization schemes. Sensitivity checks, placebos and bias-reduction metrics confirm robustness.
Equity impacts are pronounced: > 90 % of funded properties lie in tracts below 80 % of area-median income, many overlapping with federal Opportunity Zones. Interviews reveal that residents face liquidity, information and trust barriers that traditional energy-efficiency programmes seldom overcome; housing grants bypass these hurdles by embedding efficiency in urgently needed repairs.
Omar and his coauthors conclude that “housing programmes can accelerate energy efficiency in LMI communities,” recommending HUD explicitly track and reward energy outcomes. Embedding energy and sustainability-oriented metrics into federal housing programme evaluation criteria could unlock nationwide, low-cost emissions reductions while easing household energy burdens.
This summary was written with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot on July 1st, 2025. Its content was edited and verified by EPIcenter staff and affiliates.
Read the full paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-024-01314-w