To the casual eye, the basement of Firehouse 9 in this city looks like a jumble of old hydrants, Dr Pepper soft drink cartons, rakes and random gear. To specialists in energy efficiency, the 1960s-era building is a mess of a different sort: wasteful hot-water heaters for the firefighters' showers, ancient refrigerators and outdated lights.
Wrapping up an elaborate energy audit, Knoxville is about to find out which of 99 city buildings are wasting the most energy. It hopes to begin repairs this summer, just in time to catch a tsunami of U.S. government stimulus money earmarked for unglamorous tasks like replacing light bulbs and fixing leaky insulation.
Knoxville's timing is excellent. It began the arduous work of cataloguing deficiencies before the stimulus bill passed, and it is well along in planning its next steps. But experts worry that other beneficiaries, especially cities, are not ready to oversee the huge sums of energy-efficiency money that are about to come their way.
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