WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Friday announced $20 billion in investments to help finance clean energy projects such as installing electric vehicle charging stations, retrofitting homes to make them energy efficient, and providing communities with battery backup power.
The investment, across two grant competitions, aims to help communities that have faced historic underinvestment, senior administration officials said.
Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to tout the announcement this afternoon in remarks at Coppin State University in Baltimore, a historically Black university, alongside the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and members of Congress.
“The President and I set ambitious goals to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050 —the investments announced today move our nation towards achieving these goals and a cleaner, healthier future for generations to come,” Harris said in a press release.
The two competitions, the National Clean Investment Fund and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, will allocate $14 billion and $6 billion, respectively, for the projects. The funding is part of the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, an investment funded through last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, a senior administration official said.
Both competitions will focus funding on low-income and disadvantaged communities, including rural and tribal communities and those with concerns about environmental justice, the White House said. At least 40 percent of funds in the $14 billion competition and all of funds in the $6 billion competition will flow to these communities, according to the White House.
Applications are due Oct. 12, with the aim of making selection decisions by March 2024 to allow grantees to start working on projects as early as July 2024, a senior administration official said. The EPA will host public webinars on the competitions in the coming weeks.
Before the announcement, Harris and Regan will be briefed by local climate leaders.
Harris’s remarks cap off the Biden administration’s Investing in America tour, a weeks-long blitz by senior administration officials who traveled across the country to tout the president’s economic agenda.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
