Commerce Secretary Michael Ada, who is also the head of the team, said the program “will assist homeowners with their power bills.”
On March 25, the U.S. Department of Energy expanded the definition of “state” to include American jurisdictions like the CNMI, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa.
The grant is formula based and will be distributed based on each jurisdiction’s number of low-income households and climatic conditions.
The energy department said Hawaii’s base allocation of $120,000 will be used as a model because other jurisdictions don’t have such data.
“Similar to Hawaii, the U.S. territories are in hot climates with virtually no heating load, are all islands, and share a common main fuel type used in low-income households, electricity,” the grant information reads.
“As discussed previously, [the energy department] relied on Hawaii’s base allocation ($120,000) as the base allocation for the U.S. territories. This revision does not reduce the base allocation amount for any State, but instead increases the total base allocation value so as to include the U.S. territories,” it added.
