Pa. ahead of schedule weatherizing homes

Some new federal funding will help train more people to weatherize homes in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell says stimulus funding has paid for weatherizing more than 15,000 homes, to save money and energy. Some new federal funding will underwrite sealing more homes and training a thousand more people for this kind of work.

“The renewable energy market and energy conservation continue to drive our economy; training is a vital part of it,” said Rendell.  “These are going to be available to people who haven’t had economic opportunities before,” he said.

Mario Ricca is a graduate of weatherization training program.  He says the economy had hit him hard until he was retrained.

“I took the initial training to open up new job opportunities and I happened to excel in the training and was offered an instructor’s position,” said Ricca.

Pennsylvania’s goal is to weatherize 30,000 homes by 2012, in Philadelphia about two thousand have been done.