Energy Department to Award $366M to Projects in Tribal, Rural Communities

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced it is awarding $366 million to 17 projects intended to bring power and much-needed clean energy upgrades to rural and remote areas across the country.

Of the projects, a dozen will be undertaken on tribal lands with tribal partners, department officials said on a conference call with reporters.

The selected projects include microgrids, solar and battery storage systems, hydropower, heat pumps and electric vehicle charging, among other technologies.

The funding, which is being facilitated by the department’s Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas program, is just a portion of the $1 billion it received with the enactment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The program is intended to support energy programs and improvements in communities with 10,000 or fewer residents.

“Ultimately, these projects will serve 20 states and 30 tribal nations and communities, and what’s special about them is how they will showcase the innovative approaches rural and remote communities are taking to clean energy deployment,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

“They span technologies, they are replicable, they’re scalable, and they include everything from building microgrids for community health centers so they never lose power for lifesaving equipment to constructing a new hydroelectric facility on tribal lands to offset the need for expensive diesel fuel,” she said.

“Overall, these projects are going to create more affordable and more reliable energy resources for the communities they’ll be serving,” Graholm said, adding, “they’ll lower families’ energy bills and at the same time create good-paying jobs in their communities.”

Wahleah Johns, director of the Energy Department’s Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, underscored the importance of the investment by noting that an estimated 17,000 homes on tribal lands don’t have direct access to electricity and pay a majority of their annual income to securing access to power.

“Even when they do have access to it, tribal communities and tribal nations generally pay higher than average rates for electricity and have higher levels of energy poverty than other communities,” she said. “There’s one project in particular that we’re announcing funding for today that is going to enable 300 Native American homes to have power for the very first time.

“So these are really significant projects, and I’m really excited about the impact they’re going to have in communities whose residents are trying to sustain a living on their homeland while also dealing with the impacts of climate change,” Johns said.

White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said the investment announced Tuesday represents “a broad-based and massive expansion of clean energy production” in rural parts of the U.S. and tribal lands, and “the growth of economic opportunity that comes with that.”

“This is a game changer for these communities,” Zaidi continued. “Residents of these communities are going to see a real, tangible difference in their lives. They’re going to see lights coming on as they’re being plugged into the grid and they’re going to see folks putting on hard hats to do the important construction work associated with building a better America.”

Putting a political gloss on the announcement — after all, this is an election year — Zaidi rested credit for the transformative effect the projects will have squarely on President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.

“Today’s announcements build on a concerted focus from day one in this presidency of making sure opportunity springs up in every zip code of the country,” he said. “And particularly in communities that for so long have been overlooked, left out or left behind.

“In addition, I think this illustrates how Biden has really been out front, in a historic way, in recognizing and celebrating tribal sovereignty, and working across the administration to lift up the potential of our relationship, nation to nation,” he said.

Kelly Cummins, acting director for the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, said in selecting the projects for funding one of the main criteria was “energy burden” — a measure based on the percentage of household income spent on energy bills.

“When we’re looking in these rural and remote areas, which includes the tribal nations, the cost is 33% higher on average,” Cummins said. “We also know that some of these tribal nations have lots of great renewable resources, like wind and solar, so we tried to capitalize on that.

As an example, she pointed to one of the funded projects, which will ultimately energize rural Hopi and Navajo communities with solar and battery energy storage-based systems.

This is the previously referred to program that will provide electricity for the first time to 300 tribal homes. 

Currently the residents of this community are relying on kerosene, propane and gasoline- powered generators, and spending as much as 50% of their household incomes keeping the lights on and their refrigerators cool.

Cummins also told reporters that Tuesday’s funding announcement is just the first of several more to come.

“We did not put out all of the $1 billion upfront because we wanted to see what the needs of the tribal nations were and take the impact of these first projects into account as we designed the next funding opportunities,” she said.

“We’re working very closely with our loan programs officer here in the department to make sure we’re selecting the most impactful projects,” Cummins added.

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