After months of planning by state and local agencies, about $150 million in federal stimulus money for energy efficiency is starting to flow into Washington state.

The money should help weatherize thousands of homes, upgrade public buildings, spur sales of more efficient appliances, and generate hundreds of jobs.

State and local agencies have been preparing for months, and now the first stimulus-funded projects could be under way in a matter of weeks.

"Talking about it isn't as stimulating as spending it," says Stan Price, executive director of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Council.

Washington is getting a massive increase in funding for energy efficiency, says Tony Usibelli, director of the energy policy division at the state Department of Commerce.

"We can start pounding nails and putting in new equipment pretty soon," he says.

That stands in contrast to other sectors where the stimulus bump has been proportionately more modest. For example, the roughly $492 million in transportation stimulus money is a hefty amount, but represents less than one-tenth of the state's two-year transportation budget.

The chunk likely to flow out to private contractors the fastest is the state's allocation of nearly $60 million for low-income weatherization. Federal officials released the first half of that amount, almost $30 million, in mid-July.

The state expects that money will help weatherize almost 3,500 multifamily and single-family homes and create hundreds of jobs. The stimulus more than doubled the per-unit amount that can be spent for weatherization.

Residents save about 20 percent to 30 percent on monthly heating bills, according to the state Department of Commerce. That marks a significant savings because low-income families pay more than 25 percent of income for home energy costs.

Weatherization—which can include things like insulation, weather-stripping, ventilation, and lighting replacement—will be handled by 26 partners. The King County Housing Authority, for example, will get about $5 million for weatherization, about 50 percent more than its previous budget.

Nikki Parrott, the director of the housing repair and weatherization office for the housing authority, says she doesn't expect to have any difficulty finding homes that qualify. The agency already has a significant waiting list.

She expects to weatherize 1,500 to 2,000 homes over two years.

The agency already has selected nine contractors based on their bids. One complication is the requirement that contractors getting stimulus funds pay wages that meet the requirements of the Davis-Bacon Act, a federal law that requires federally funded projects to pay local prevailing wages. Since weatherization in the past has not been subject to Davis-Bacon requirements, agencies like KCHA are still figuring out how the new rules will apply.

Other chunks of federal stimulus money will be rolling out in the form of about $48 million in energy-efficiency block grants to counties, cities, and tribes. Snohomish County, for example, plans to divvy up $4.8 million into projects such as the $1.5 million retrofit of 13 county buildings, lighting upgrades for parks and solid waste transfer stations and home energy audits.

Efficiency upgrades to county facilities should save almost 1.7 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 65,750 therms of natural gas each year, says Christie Baumel, senior planner. Snohomish County has not yet gotten official approval for its plan from the Department of Energy, Baumel says, but expects to hear back by early fall.

Other blocks of energy funding will flow through in smaller chunks. The Department of Commerce will push through $6.4 million in block grants to small cities and counties. The Washington State University Energy Program will spend $14.5 million on at least three neighborhood-based energy efficiency projects. Another $5 million is slated to be spent on credit enhancements for financial institutions to encourage clean-energy loans.

The rollout of new programs, each with a small slice of stimulus funding, raises questions among some observers about how effective the spending will be at providing a long-term boost to the state's energy-efficiency industry, as opposed to a short-term blip.

"The hope is that the money will be used in a way that will create sustainable growth and continued business activity," says Haeryung Shin, an attorney with Seattle-based law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP who represents clean tech companies and venture capital funds.