The Biden-Harris Administration announced on May 16 the availability of nearly $11 billion in grants and loan opportunities to assist rural energy and utility providers in bringing clean energy such as geothermal technology to their communities across the country.
This represents the single largest investment in rural electrification since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936.
Funding is available through two programs under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Specifically, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will be opening a Letter of Interest process for the Empowering Rural America (“New ERA”) program, which makes $9.7 billion available to eligible rural electric cooperatives to deploy renewable energy, zero-emission systems, and carbon capture systems.
In addition to New ERA, the USDA will also be opening a Letter of Interest process for the Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) program that makes $1 billion available in partially forgivable loans to renewable-energy developers and electric service providers, including municipalities, cooperatives, and investor-owned and tribal utilities to help finance large-scale geothermal, solar, wind, biomass, or hydropower projects, and energy storage in support of renewable energy systems.
Click here for more information on the New ERA program.
Click here for more information on the PACE program.
The IRA, which was passed by the U.S. Senate in August 2022, includes various geothermal tax credit extensions through the year 2034. Some credits are also available to nontax-paying entities such as nonprofit organizations and tribes. Click here to read a full list of the geothermal tax credits.