The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $125 million for the seventh cohort of grant recipients to protect power transmission systems from climate-exacerbated disruptions.
According to a DOE news release, the latest group of awardees for the State Resilience Network and Tribal Formula grants consists of nine states and five tribal nations. The states are Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Washington and Wyoming. The tribal nations are the Beaver Village, the Chilkat Indian Village, the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and the S’Klallam Tribe of Jamestown.
The DOE has now awarded more than $580.5 million under the five-year program allocated $2.3 billion to improve the reliability of power grids against disturbances such as extreme weather and wildfires, according to the department.
Grant-awarded efforts focus on improving network infrastructure and maintaining a skilled workforce.
“This year, the U.S. has already incurred $15 billion in extreme weather-related disaster costs, underscoring the urgent need to strengthen the grid to provide Americans with a reliable supply of energy,” he said. said Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm in a statement. “Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and his transformational investments, we’re not only strengthening the nation’s power grid for the future, we’re also empowering the American workforce, ensuring that keep the lights on in our communities.”
The Investing in America agenda is the general name for the policies adopted by the Joe Biden administration to increase US self-sufficiency in critical sectors such as clean energy rather than reliance on imports. “For decades, the US exported jobs and imported products, while other countries outperformed us in critical sectors such as infrastructure, clean energy, semiconductors and biotechnology,” the White House says on its website . “Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, including landmark legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Biden, such as the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Science and the Inflation Reduction Act, which is changing.”
The DOE press release said, “As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda…these grants [the grid resilience grant] will help modernize the electricity grid to reduce the impacts of extreme weather and climate-induced natural disasters while ensuring the reliability of the electricity sector.
“This funding will enable communities to access affordable, reliable and clean electricity while helping to meet the President’s ambitious clean energy goals.”
The grant is funded by the Jobs and Infrastructure Investments Act, popularly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, according to the DOE, whose Office of Network Deployment administers the grant.
Applications for 2022 and 2023 have now closed, the DOE said.
The DOE had increased this year’s target awards “to better account for the likelihood of disruptive events on tribal lands,” as the agency announced on May 5. The DOE in that announcement also extended the application deadline to August 31 for Indian tribes.
To contact the author, please email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
