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The Biden administration announced Tuesday that the federal government will fund 17 projects across the country to expand access to renewable energy on Native American reservations and other rural areas.
The $366 million plan will pay for solar, battery storage and hydropower projects in sparsely populated areas where electricity is expensive and unreliable. The money comes from the $1 trillion infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the announcement at the Clean Energy Tribal Summit in Southern California, which began Tuesday, “historic.”
“This is the largest amount the Department of Energy has awarded to a tribe for an energy project,” she said.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that about one-fifth of Navajo homes in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah lack electricity. Nearly one-third of households with electricity on U.S. Indian reservations report losing power each month, according to the Biden administration.
The announcement comes as Native American tribes in Nevada and Arizona fight to protect their lands and sacred sites amid the Biden administration’s renewable energy expansion. It also comes days after federal regulators gave Native American tribes more power to block hydroelectric projects on their lands.
The Biden administration will secure funding for the 17 projects only after negotiations with project applicants, federal officials said.
Sheri Smith, president of the nonprofit Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, called the announcement “bittersweet” and said the project needs more funding and support from government and philanthropic organizations to become a reality. said.
“These announcements bring hope to the community,” Smith said. “We still have a ways to go to translate these ambitions into concrete results.”
The project spans 20 states and involves 30 tribes. These include $30 million to bring plant-based energy to wildfire-prone communities in California’s Sierra Nevada and $3,200 to build solar and hydroelectric power for American Indian tribes in Washington state. It includes $27 million for the construction of a hydroelectric power plant to serve tribal villages. In Alaska.
In 2019, the Hopi Tribe of Arizona lost jobs and a longtime source of energy when a major coal-fired power plant closed for the first time in nearly 50 years. It was an important source of income for the Navajo and Hopi peoples.
The Biden administration plans to allocate more than $9 million to a project led by Arizona State University in partnership with the Hopi Tribe to build solar panels and battery storage for the Tribe.
Kristen Parrish, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, said the project will provide tribal residents with a reliable source of electricity.
“Even more important than the fact that it’s clean is the fact that it’s reliable,” Parrish said of the project.
The Department of Energy also announced funding for a $57 million project to provide solar power and battery storage to up to 175 community health centers in rural Southeastern states, including Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. .
The idea for the project stemmed from power outages in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017, which disrupted health care workers’ ability to perform their jobs, said the nonprofit National Center for Community Health. said Ben Money, the association’s senior vice president of population health. Money said people who live in rural areas may only have access to one medical center in their area.
“In the event of a power outage or natural or man-made disaster, local residents will likely rely on the facilities at their community health center more than residents in other areas with other options,” he said. To tell.
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Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Platform X, where he was previously known as Twitter: @sophieadanna
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