The grid is overburdened, under-resourced — and vital to the energy transition. New federal funding aims to increase capacity and get more clean energy built.

The U.S. power grid is overburdened and under-resourced — and the Biden administration just announced a major investment aimed at helping solve those problems.

The Department of Energy has offered $2.2 billion to eight projects across 18 states that could expand and strengthen the grid. The projects range from deploying grid-enhancing technologies that boost the capacity of existing power lines to building brand-new high-voltage transmission cables that will enable wind farms in the Great Plains and off the coast of New England to plug into the grid.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled a major investment as part of the Biden-Harris administration’s Investing in America agenda. The 2024 Renew America’s Schools Prize and Grant, a three-phase initiative totaling $190 million, aims to modernize K-12 public schools with energy-efficient upgrades. This initiative will help schools reduce energy use and costs, improve indoor air quality, and create healthier learning environments for students and teachers.

Just last year, Southwest Gas and its stockholders celebrated the largest revenue increase in company history, thanks to the company’s back-to-back rate hikes on Arizona customers in 2022 and 2023.

Here we are in 2024 and gas company executives once again are making plans to hike utility bills for the third time in three years! Southwest Gas filed a new rate case at the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), seeking a $125.6 million increase to its revenues, which is a roughly 12% rate hike. 

Mayor Regina Romero said the projects include installing dozens of shelters at bus stops, adding trees for shade, replacing aging equipment, and increasing accessibility with larger print, Braille and audible information.

“Decarbonizing our bus fleet, greening up our bus stops so that people can use transit more and we can get that toxic, toxic CO2 emissions out of our air is so important, especially for the front lines of climate change,” she said during a Wednesday press conference. “The front lines are those hurt first and worst. Those are seniors, low income communities, communities of color, children, their health and safety is on the line.”

Federal funding will support three new battery energy storage facilities, lower energy bills, create jobs, and promote sustainability in cities like Sahuarita.

$55.2 million is headed to Sierra Southwest Cooperative Services Inc. to finance three new battery energy storage systems. The funding will bring clean energy to rural Arizonans in cities like Sahuarita, lowering energy bills and creating more jobs for farmers, ranchers, and producers.

The fifth edition of Climate Change Indicators in the United States documents how climate change is impacting the United States today, the significance of these changes, and their possible consequences for people, the environment, and society.

Historic funding to plug orphaned oil and gas wells will address environmental and safety hazards, create good-paying jobs.

The Department of the Interior today awarded $126.7 million through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda for Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, New York and Ohio to address legacy pollution.

Orphaned oil and gas wells are polluting backyards, recreation areas, and community spaces across the country. Many of these wells pose serious health and safety threats to the air we breathe and water we drink by contaminating surface and groundwater, releasing toxic air pollutants, and leaking methane – a “super pollutant” that is a significant cause of climate change and many times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Plugging orphaned wells supports broader Biden-Harris administration efforts under the U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan.

Projects Funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Strengthen American Farms and Rural Small Businesses

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA is partnering with rural Americans on hundreds of clean energy projects to lower energy bills, expand access to clean energy and create jobs for U.S. farmers, ranchers and agricultural producers. Many of the projects are funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the nation’s largest-ever investment in combating the climate crisis.

Inflation Reduction Act final rules build on Administration actions to develop a skilled, well-paid workforce to build the clean energy economy and combat the climate crisis

Since day one, President Biden has committed to building a clean energy economy that creates good-paying and union jobs for American workers. Spurred by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, which includes the most significant investment in climate and clean energy in history, America has unleashed a clean energy manufacturing and deployment boom that has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment and created more than 270,000 new good-paying and union clean energy jobs.