Biden To Dish Out $7.3 Billion For Clean Rural Power

President Joe Biden will travel to Wisconsin on Thursday to announce $7.3 billion in federal clean energy spending in rural communities across the country.

The Biden administration is calling it the “largest investment in rural electrification” since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s.

The funds, which will be divvied out to 16 electric cooperatives serving millions of customers across 23 states, will go toward building and purchasing more than 10 gigawatts of wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower.

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, a senior administration official said the “impact of this investment cannot be overstated,” noting that the money is forecast to support more than 20,000 permanent or temporary jobs, eliminate more than 43.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually — equivalent to 10 million gas-powered vehicles — and lower electricity costs for approximately 20% of all rural households, around 5 million.

“Today’s awards will bring clean, affordable, reliable power to
rural Americans all across our nation,” John Podesta, Biden’s top climate adviser, said in a statement.

Biden and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will unveil the awards, distributed through USDA’s Empowering Rural America program and funded by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, at an event Thursday in Westby, Wisconsin. With those investments, the administration expects to leverage an additional $29 billion in private-sector investment.

In Wisconsin, a key battleground state in the 2024 presidential election, Dairyland Power Cooperative, headquartered in La Crosse, will put its nearly $573 million award toward securing more than a gigawatt of power from four solar and four wind installations. The co-op, which serves approximately 700,000 customers in Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota, expects the funding will allow it to lower its electricity rates 42% over the next decade and slash annual greenhouse gas emissions by 3 million tons over the life of the projects, according to a summary of the awards the administration released.

Dairyland Power President and CEO Brent Ridge said in an accompanying statement that the money provides the co-op with “a tremendous opportunity to continue making vital investments in essential clean energy resources.”

As Biden continues to roll out clean energy investments from the IRA, his signature climate law that Democrats passed in 2022, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is campaigning on a pledge to end Biden’s so-called “war” on energy. He’s promised to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas, and to dismantle the Biden administration’s climate policies and its clean energy investments.