The Biden administration announce it will fund 17 projects across the U.S. to expand access to renewable energy on Native American reservations and in other rural areas. The $366 million plan will fund solar, battery storage and hydropower projects in sparsely populated regions where electricity can be costly and unreliable. Via U.S. News & World Report:
The money comes from a $1 trillion infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed in 2021. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the announcement “historic” at a clean energy tribal summit in Southern California that began Tuesday. “This is the largest amount that the Department of Energy has awarded to tribes for energy projects,” she said.
About a fifth of homes in the Navajo Nation — located in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah — do not have access to electricity, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates. Nearly a third of homes that have electricity on Native American reservations in the U.S. report monthly outages, according to the Biden administration.
The announcement comes as Native tribes in Nevada and Arizona fight to protect their lands and sacred sites amid the Biden administration's expansion of renewable energy. It also comes days after federal regulators granted Native American tribes more authority to block hydropower projects on their land.
While he was running for president, Joe Biden promised he would bring renewable energy to Native tribes, and he's delivering.
