OCS DCL-2022-10 EARTH DAY FY2022

The Office of Community Services (OCS) is pleased to announce the celebration of Earth Day. Since 1970, Earth Day has been observed every year on April 22. This Earth Day, OCS is working to highlight the disproportionate impact climate change has on the communities we serve and how OCS programs can mitigate this harm and promote environmental justice and racial equity.

OCS Celebrates Earth Day

Today, OCS has taken the following steps to uplift the critical role that our programs play in mitigating the impacts of climate change:

• This morning, we awarded more than $385 million to help families and individuals with their energy costs through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). This release follows recent significant investments in LIHEAP through the American Rescue Plan (ARP), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and congressional appropriations. As the nation grapples with the impacts of climate change and the threat of extreme weather, which disproportionally impact communities of color and households with low incomes, LIHEAP is a critical tool to promote both energy justice and racial equity.

• • The White House released a Fact Sheet about the historic funding for LIHEAP to help lower home energy bills for American families.

• Tomorrow on Earth Day, we will release a new Heat Stress Geographic Information System (GIS) Dashboard . As we prepare to enter a summer that is predicted to have above-normal temperatures in most of the country, OCS is working to highlight and maximize the ways that LIHEAP can help households pay their home energy bills and mitigate the effects of heat stress. OCS has created this Heat Stress Dashboard to support grant recipients as they work to address the impact of climate change and extreme heat in their communities. The Dashboard provides information on the progression of extreme heat over time, the health impacts of extreme heat, and visualizations on how LIHEAP can alleviate extreme heat stress for vulnerable populations. Through the dashboard, grant recipients and other interested parties can explore data visualizations on extreme heat days overtime, extreme health related hospitalizations, the impact of energy burden on vulnerable populations, and more. Most importantly, LIHEAP grant recipients can use the dashboard to examine the intersection between energy burden and extreme heat to ensure resources are available in counties where there are populations with high energy burden and exposure to extreme temperatures (above 90 degrees Fahrenheit).

• • The Dashboard will be published and available for public use tomorrow at 12pm ET. We recommend using either a Google Chrome or a Microsoft Edge browser to ensure all the content can load properly.

• • The White House released a Fact Sheet about how the Biden-Harris Administration has created cost-saving clean energy opportunities to combat climate change.  Read about how LIHEAP has been a crucial part of this effort.

• We developed an Earth Day webpage that contains a plethora of materials that underscore the impact of OCS programs and their connections to Earth Day and environmental justice. The materials are also being used to connect with households in need of utility assistance. These materials include:

• • Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program  (PDF) (LIHEAP), Low Income Household Water Assistance Program  (PDF) (LIHWAP), and Rural Community Development (PDF) (RCD) program one-pagers that highlight each program’s connections to environmental justice, racial equity, and climate change

• • Short LIHEAP and LIHWAP videos that explain the need for each program and share where potential program beneficiaries can go to get both energy and water assistance

• • A social media toolkit that can be used by a variety of audiences to celebrate Earth Day, underscore the urgency of climate change, advocate for environmental justice, and share critical information about the impact of OCS programs

• • Two LIHWAP radio audio news releases (ANRs) that are running nationally in both English and Spanish to raise awareness about funds to assist households with low incomes with water and wastewater bills

• • Copies of two LIHEAP ANRs that ran nationally in both English and Spanish to raise awareness about the availability of LIHEAP funds to assist households in need of energy assistance
     

Additionally, OCS is now on Twitter. We encourage you to follow us @OCS_ACFgov for more Earth Day celebrations and OCS updates. We encourage grant recipients to share stories across your platforms about the importance of Earth Day, climate change, environmental justice, and racial equity in your community using #earthday2022.

As always, we thank you for all the work that you do to support vulnerable communities and care for our planet. We are so grateful for your continued commitment to our shared mission.