Anasa Mpingo's refrigerator thermometer showed 36 degrees - ideal for keeping food cold without wasting electricity. The only problem? The thermometer was outside the refrigerator, not in.

Since a flood forced her out of her Allenstown home two years ago and her contractor walked off the job, Mpingo has spent her days in the unheated house and nights with friends or family. Relentlessly cheerful, she warmly welcomed volunteers from a state weatherization program earlier this month, though it was obvious that nothing in the tool kits they carried would do much to help her current situation.

"I'm grateful for this," she said as the volunteers used a hair dryer to stick foam weather-stripping around sliding glass doors. "I'm making it."

Mpingo's case is extreme - the StayWarm NH program is designed for low-income residents seeking help lowering their heating bills, not those without heat. But it illustrates the wide gap between the need for such services and the available resources.

The state has enough money from the federal government and utilities to fully weatherize 900 homes this winter, and StayWarm NH - a new initiative - aims to reach another 5,300 homes.

Paid for mostly with money raised by auctioning pollution credits, StayWarm expects to fully weatherize 570 homes, plug air leaks in 730, send volunteers to 500 to make small changes such as caulking around drafty windows, and distribute 3,500 do-it-yourself kits.

Even with the new program, the number of homes benefiting doesn't come close to approaching the estimated 16,000 that are eligible, said StayWarm NH director Laura Richardson. But she is encouraged by signs that both the state and federal governments are beginning to focus not just on helping people pay high energy bills but helping them reduce those bills in the first place.

"We have this big bucket that we keep pouring energy dollars into, and that energy just leaks out the bottom," Richardson said. "This program is really designed to help plug that hole."

In his Jan. 8 inaugural address, Gov. John Lynch proposed expanding the StayWarm NH program as part of a new Green Jobs Initiative, putting carpenters, electricians and plumbers to work helping families cut energy costs. Funding would come from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state cap-and-trade system that began auctioning pollution credits in September.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has called for weatherizing 1 million homes a year. By comparison, 5.6 million low-income homes have been weatherized with public help in the 30 years since the federal government began sending weatherization funding to states.

"We need this. Our housing stock is not adequate. Some of it is really attractive, but a lot of it does not perform well," Richardson said. "We have the technologies to fix it. We need it to be our priority. And Gov. Lynch and President Obama, they both recognize that there is tremendous energy savings and money savings through this kind of a program."

Andy Gray, weatherization program manager at the state Office of Energy and Planning, also hopes the program will get a boost under Obama, but he'll believe it when he sees it.

"Certainly the talk is going in the right direction. But the Bush administration had talked about doubling our budget over four years, and that never happened. We actually had a 15 percent reduction," he said.

Weatherization, he said, is probably the most cost-effective investment government can make.

"It just makes sense. It's immediate savings to the customer and the public, and it provides jobs," he said.

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