The Department of Energy is giving up to $371 million mainly to community projects in an effort to provide local benefits from 16 under-development interstate transmission lines, DOE said Wednesday.
The funding marks the first round of grants to be issued under the $760 million Transmission Siting and Economic Development program, which was created through the Inflation Reduction Act, according to Maria Robinson, director of DOE’s Grid Deployment Office.
The program offers grants to support economic development in communities affected by transmission lines and for permitting by state and local agencies.
The program helps foster transmission development “by getting communities really invested in the idea of transmission, by helping them see tangible effects through economic development,” Robinson said during a media briefing. “Sometimes folks think about transmission projects as providing economic development in the short term, the construction piece, but these projects … are really ensuring sustained economic development.”
DOE selected 16 community projects and four permitting-related projects in its initial funding under the program. The department didn’t say which transmission projects were related to the grants.
The funding will be dispersed when the transmission projects break ground, according to Robinson. The funding is lost if the projects don’t start construction within two years, she said.
“These projects will equip state and local siting agencies with more resources to conduct timely reviews and catalyze economic growth in small, rural, and disadvantaged communities across the country that are impacted by transmission development, ensuring that they share in the benefits of new transmission deployment,” DOE said.
Six projects will implement workforce training programs and 10 projects are in counties and communities with less than 20,000 people, the department said.
The Illinois Commerce Commission, for example, will receive $8 million to streamline and improve the transmission siting process for several Midcontinent Independent System Operator transmission projects in the state, according to DOE.
The Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission was awarded $4.6 million and the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin was granted $3 million to review pending transmission projects and increase their public outreach, according to DOE.
Colorado’s Alamosa County was awarded a $1.7 million grant to study possible transmission corridors between Colorado and New Mexico that could offer access to solar resources in the area, Robinson said.
DOE selected the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources for a $42.3 million grant to set up a renewable energy-powered microgrid at a school in Barnstable, Massachusetts, a community that will be affected by a power line for an offshore wind farm.
DOE expects to issue the program’s second funding opportunity in the fall, according to Robinson.
