A wind turbine stands in a cornfield in southern South Dakota on Aug. 14, 2024. (Makenzie Huber, South Dakota Searchlight)
A rural electric cooperative serving South Dakotans is among 16 co-ops sharing in $7.3 billion from the federal government for clean energy projects that President Joe Biden announced Thursday in Wisconsin.
Basin Electric Power Cooperative will apply its funding toward 1,400 megawatts’ worth of renewable energy infrastructure in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. Estimated long-term member savings are over $400 million. Plus, the project would reduce greenhouse gasses — equivalent to removing 522,000 gasoline-powered cars annually from the road.
“Renewable generation is a key portion of our balanced approach to resource development,” said Basin Electric Power Cooperative CEO and General Manager Todd Brickhouse.
His comments were included in a news release from the federal government, which did not specify the amount of funding awarded to Basin. The cooperative did not immediately respond to a message from South Dakota Searchlight.
The funds come from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included $13 billion in rural electrification programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
That represents “the largest investment in rural electrification since 1936 and the New Deal,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters in a briefing Wednesday ahead of the announcement.
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The funds announced Thursday are under the USDA’s Empowering Rural America program, dubbed New ERA. Federal grants and loans are projected to seed another $29 billion in private investment to produce more than 10 gigawatts of clean energy for rural communities — enough to power about 4 million homes according to one federal estimate.
The 16 power co-ops taking part serve residents in 23 states. The initiative will “bring the promise of clean energy and lower costs to about 5 million rural households, representing 20% of the nation’s entire rural households, as well as farms and businesses that are located in those 23 states,” Vilsack said.
Collectively, the co-ops are projected to add 4,500 jobs on top of 16,000 construction jobs, according to the USDA. The projects include 3,700 megawatts of wind power, 4,700 MW of solar power, 800 MW of nuclear power and 357 MW of hydropower.
“All of this is designed not only to provide more reliant electricity for those rural communities, but will also result in a 43.7-million-ton annual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,” Vilsack said.
All projects funded through the Inflation Reduction Act must be fully completed by Sept. 30, 2031, according to administration officials.
The New ERA program is limited to rural electric cooperatives. Another USDA program, PACE (Powering Affordable Clean Energy), also funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, provides low-interest loans to rural energy providers for clean energy and energy storage projects. Vilsack said the USDA has made 19 awards nationally under that program, totaling $665 million.
The Inflation Reduction Act also expanded the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which provides grants and loans to farmers and rural small businesses installing renewable energy systems or undertaking energy-efficiency projects. The Biden administration has so far put $2.2 billion into that program, covering 7,600 projects.
In announcing the New ERA program and projects in Wisconsin, Biden took something of a victory lap.
His Wisconsin visit as well as a stop in Michigan are “part of a broader effort that we’ve launched to hear directly from different communities across the country who are benefiting from the president’s investing in America agenda, and as a result, have peace of mind and more hope for the future,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian told reporters in Wednesday’s briefing.
When Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office in 2021, they “rejected conventional wisdom that trickle-down economics was the best path for America,” Quillian said. “Instead, President Biden built the economy from the middle out and the bottom up and made sure that instead of providing tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, he invested here in America and in Americans.”
Thursday’s announcement, she said, joined other administration initiatives toward that end, including 350 road, bridge and other infrastructure repair projects in Wisconsin; $200 million set aside towards removing lead pipes in the state; and the first-ever enactment of a national standard for PFAS chemicals by the Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2021, Biden visited La Crosse, Wisconsin, and “laid out his plans for a better future,” Quillian said. “And when he returns (Thursday), he will have delivered on so many of those promises.”
A version of this story was originally published by
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