The Biden-Harris administration in the U.S has announced USD $7.3 Billion of funding for 16 rural electric cooperatives to provide electricity for five million people.

The funding is aimed at providing green energy for 20 percent of rural households, farms, businesses and schools in the U.S.

The 16 co-ops will leverage $7.3 billion from the U.S Inflation Reduction Act funded by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. In total, the administration says the coops are leveraging private investments of more than $29 billion to build more than 10 gigawatts of clean energy for rural communities across the country.

In the process, the coops will make enabling investments in areas including transmission, substation upgrades, and distributed energy resource management software aiming to lower energy costs for rural Americans, said a statement by the administration. 

‘The investments are also designed to support more than 4,500 permanent jobs and more 16,000 construction jobs. They are expected to prevent at least 43.7 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution annually, equivalent to removing pollution from more than 10 million gas-powered cars every year,’ added the statement.

Dairy company goes green

In Wisconsin, Dairyland Power Cooperative is receiving the first award of nearly $573 million, which they will leverage for a total project investment of $2.1 billion. Dairyland plans to procure 1,080 megawatts of renewable energy through eight wind and solar power purchase agreements, four solar installations, and four wind power installations across rural portions of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois. Dairyland estimates that electric rates for their members will be 42% lower over 10 years than they would have been without the funding.

The Inflation Reduction Act was enacted in 2022. Through the Act nearly $13 billion has been invested in rural electrification across multiple programs. It provides subsidies and tax credits for electricity generation from renewable energy sources and input assets, batteries, electric vehicle (EV) sector and the production of low emissions fuels.

Separately, the Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) program created under the same Act funds new clean energy projects and energy storage in rural America. The program provides low-interest loans with up to 60% loan forgiveness to renewable energy developers, rural electric cooperatives and other rural energy providers for renewable energy storage and projects that use wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal and biomass.