US govt allocates USD 11bn to support clean rural electrification

The US government on Tuesday announced two new grant and loan programmes with total availability of nearly USD 11 billion (EUR 10.1bn) to aid rural electrification across the country with a focus on clean energy.

The Biden-Harris Administration, through the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), is getting ready to open a Letter of Interest process for a programme dubbed Empowering Rural America, or New ERA. This programme sets aside USD 9.7 billion for eligible rural electric cooperatives looking to deploy renewable energy plants, as well as zero-emission and carbon capture systems.

At the same time, USDA will gauge interest as part of the USD-1-billion Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) programme, which will support large-scale solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydro and energy storage projects. In this case, the beneficiaries of “partially forgivable loans” may include project developers and electric service providers such as municipals, cooperatives, and investor-owned and Tribal utilities.

According to the announcement, this is the single largest investment in rural electrification in the US since 1936, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law.

The two programmes are part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.919)

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