White Home pronounces $13 billion in grid resilience funds

The Biden administration on Friday morning introduced $13 billion in funds to modernize the U.S. energy grid utilizing allocations from the bipartisan infrastructure legislation.

The funds will embody $10.5 billion in aggressive grants and one other $2.5 billion via the Transmission Facilitation Program; they signify the most important federal funding in transmission and distribution in U.S. historical past, White Home senior adviser and infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu informed reporters on a press name Thursday.

Division of Power Grid Deployment Workplace Director Maria Robinson stated the grant program will seemingly open to submissions with a deadline of February.

Landrieu alluded to quite a few current pure disasters and excessive climate occasions which have affected energy grid infrastructure lately, such because the 2021 Dixie Wildfire in California, or the winter storms the identical 12 months that knocked out Texas’s self-contained grid.

“The funding we’re asserting at the moment will assist us construct new transmission traces and develop the capability of our energy grid in order that it might endure these pure disasters and meet the necessity of our booming clear vitality economic system,” he informed reporters.

“Consultants estimate that we have to triple the capability of our electrical automobile transmission system by 2050 to satisfy the demand of electrical automobiles, wind, photo voltaic and extra,” he added. “It is a vital step to doing precisely that.”

White Home nationwide local weather adviser Ali Zaidi famous that the administration has additionally issued approvals for a number of interstate transmission traces that can span Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and California and unlock capability of about six gigawatts.

Officers on the decision additionally touted current Biden administration efforts to enhance grid resilience, equivalent to a current memorandum of understanding signed by the Environmental Safety Company and the Inside, Agriculture, Power and Protection departments to coordinate on streamlining allowing critiques for renewables on federal lands.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), in the meantime, has sought to deliver vitality allowing reform laws to the ground of Congress. Officers on the decision confirmed the White Home continues to assist allowing reform normally.