Biden administration announces $3 billion for rural electric co-ops

The Biden administration announced more than $3 billion Friday in funding for seven rural electric cooperatives, part of a broader effort to promote renewable energy in rural areas.

The grants include nearly $2.5 billion in financing for the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, as well as nearly $1 billion through the Department of Agriculture’s Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program for six co-ops. The New ERA program, which uses $9.7 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funds, is the biggest federal investment in rural electrification since the New Deal in the 1930s.

The Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association funding will cut electricity rates for members by an estimated 10 percent over the next 10 years, equivalent to about $430 million in benefits to rural electricity consumers.

Meanwhile, the six co-ops announced Friday, some of which will serve rural areas in multiple states, are in Minnesota, South Dakota, South Carolina, Colorado, Nebraska and Texas.

“The Inflation Reduction Act makes the largest investment in rural electrification since FDR and the New Deal in the 1930s,” said John Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy. “Today’s awards will bring clean, affordable, reliable power to rural Americans from Colorado to Texas to South Carolina.”

The announcement comes more than a month after President Biden announced $7.3 billion in funding for rural co-ops in Wisconsin, a critical “blue wall” battleground state in the presidential election. The funding announced in Wisconsin in September included $573 million to La Crosse’s Dairyland Power Cooperative, part of a larger $2.1 billion project that the co-op will use to buy solar and wind power from Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin. That project is pitched to reduce rates at a higher rate than the Tri-State project — at a reduction of 42 percent over the next 10 years.