President Joe Biden’s administration and the Department of Energy (DOE) announced an investment of $2.2 billion on Tuesday aimed at strengthening the nation’s electrical grid against extreme weather and facilitating the shift towards cleaner energy sources.
According to the Associated Press (AP), the investment will create funding for eight projects across 18 states in an effort to meet increasing energy demands.
In addition, the investment will support the construction of over 600 miles of new transmission lines and a revamp of approximately 400 miles of existing lines, enabling the lines to handle higher electricity loads.
According to the DOE, this investment is the largest direct infusion of funds into the national grid in history and is projected to deliver reliable and affordable electricity to 56 million homes and businesses, the AP reported.
“They’ll help us to meet the needs of electrified homes and businesses and new manufacturing facilities and all of these growing data centers that are placing demands on the grid,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a press call to announce the funding, per the AP.
Newsweek reached out to the Department of Energy via email on Tuesday for comment.
Large electrical transmission lines run through grass lands to power the newly completed Meta’s Facebook data center in Eagle Mountain, Utah on July 18, 2024. Department of Energy (DOE) announced an investment of $2.2 billion…
Granholm spoke about what she characterized as the urgency of the initiative, citing the escalating frequency of climate change-driven extreme weather events that damage power infrastructure and cause widespread outages.
The investment marks the second round of funding from the $10.5 billion Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program, which was established under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, and more project announcements are expected later this year in states such as California, Virginia, South Carolina, Montana and North Dakota.
The move comes as many electric utilities now face a surge in demand as Americans electrify more appliances and cars, data centers draw more energy and more manufacturing returns to the U.S.
“We’re seeing a huge amount of onshoring and restoring of critical minerals processing, battery manufacturing,” Jigar Shah, director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, told Newsweek for a previous story.
Shah added that more than 600 new or expanded manufacturing facilities have been announced since Biden took office and said those facilities will need power.
“So, the question becomes, how do we connect them, and do we want to do it in the most expensive way possible—which is sort of the default setting—or do we want to do it in a lower-cost way?” Shah said.
Meanwhile, Max Luke, director of business development and regulatory affairs at the clean technology company VEIR, praised the new investments but noted more work remains. In comments made to the AP, he stressed that while these steps are significant, much more capacity will be required to achieve deep decarbonization and net-zero goals.
“If you look at the scale of the challenge and the quantity of grid capacity needed for deep decarbonization and net zero, it’s a drop in the bucket,” Luke said.
The AP also reported that Princeton University’s “Net-Zero America” research indicates that the U.S. will need to expand electricity transmission by about 60 percent by 2030 and possibly triple it by 2050 to meet these targets.
The $2.2 billion investment is just one example of efforts made by the Biden administration to transition to clean energy while trying to meet a demand for energy needs. Perhaps most notably, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law in 2022. This landmark legislation offers historic levels of support for a range of clean energy projects including solar and wind installations, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, EV charging infrastructure and home energy efficiency improvements.