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Last May, the Trump administration proposed eliminating a key federal program that lowers energy bills for low-income households. Now, amid a mounting energy-affordability crisis, that program has officially survived — and even gotten a funding boost.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed a spending bill with more than $4 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Since 1981, the federal initiative has helped millions of Americans pay their utility bills, undertake energy-related home repairs, and make weatherization upgrades that save them money.
Now, LIHEAP has $20 million more than it had last year. The spending line item was part of a roughly $1.2 trillion package to end the partial government shutdown, which passed 217–214 in the House and 71–29 in the Senate.
“LIHEAP provides a lifeline for families who are having trouble paying their utility bills,” said Xavier Boatright, deputy legislative director at the Sierra Club. ​“For now, we are glad that Congress has acknowledged that letting families suffer without heating or cooling assistance in the face of extreme weather events is truly cruel.”
The move is a stark reversal in the Trump administration’s war on energy efficiency, which last spring threatened to terminate LIHEAP as well as slash other key programs meant to keep household utility bills in check. But energy costs are soaring across the U.S. and have become a pivotal political issue, helping propel Democrats to victory in several state races last November.
Though the funding is enough to assist about 6 million low-income families with their heating and cooling bills this year, it covers only about 17% of eligible households, according to Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association.
And despite the new funding — which is comparable to allocations in recent years — the program did take a major hit last April when the Department of Health and Human Services fired the entire team administering LIHEAP.
Still, the program, which provides block grants that states administer, is limping along, according to Wolfe. ​“They’re leaning on grant-management staff to process state payments and a very small number of senior [staff at the Office of the Administration for Children and Families] to manage policy.”
However, states are missing out on technical assistance, which could hurt LIHEAP’s efficacy long term, Wolfe said.
LIHEAP isn’t the only energy efficiency program to get a reprieve. In January, the president also signed a separate appropriations package extending the life of two other long-standing initiatives.
One is Energy Star, the Environmental Protection Agency program that bequeaths its bright-blue label to consumer appliances that meet certain efficiency standards.
That initiative is now stronger than ever, with $33 million in funding — slightly more than in fiscal year 2024. Last spring, the EPA said it planned to disband or privatize the high-value program, which has helped Americans save $40 billion on their energy bills each year: For every dollar of benefit, the program cost the government less than a tenth of a penny, according to the nonprofit Institute for Market Transformation.
In the same spending bill, Congress also revived the Weatherization Assistance Program, which for the past half century has aided millions of households in making their homes more resilient to extreme temperatures, with upgrades such as insulation and plugging air leaks. These home improvements save families an average of $372 every year.
Before that piece of legislation landed on the president’s desk in January, the Republican-controlled Congress overwhelmingly approved the package, which passed the House 397–28 and the Senate 82–15.
While advocates celebrated the funding of LIHEAP as a crucial move, Boatright pointed out that the broader cost challenges aren’t going anywhere. After all, he said, many Trump administration policies — like blocking cheap, clean energy — will continue to make affordability problems even worse.
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