"DOE is making financing available for projects that improve resilience and expand transmission capacity across the electrical grid, so we can reliably move clean energy from places where it's produced to places where it's needed most," said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. "This is a down payment on our efforts to modernize our transmission nationwide but we need the American Jobs Plan to complete them. These investments will make our power system more resilient against threats and more reliable as we increase our clean energy capacity, creating thousands of jobs in the process."
President Biden's American Jobs Plan calls for historic investments to modernize and upgrade the country's power grid, improving resilience against cyber threats, natural disasters, and physical attacks. This includes expansion and upgrades to transmission lines which are also essential to the administration's goal of reaching 100% clean electricity by 2035. Renewable energy capacity is often generated far away from population centers where demand is highest. Without added transmission capacity, the electricity grid cannot reliably and consistently deliver renewably sourced power from these points of generation to high demand areas.
As DOE joins federal efforts to increase the grid's renewable energy capacity such as the plan announced last month to add 30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 Secretary Granholm has made addressing transmission challenges a key priority. This week's announcement lays out financial tools that DOE can bring to bear in support of transmission development. Passage of the American Jobs Plan will allow DOE to expand on these resources.
DOE has two separate financing streams available to assist with transmission projects:
Details on loan guarantees through LPO and application instructions can be found here. Details on loan eligibility through TIP and application instructions can be found here. The full list of announcements around efforts to enhance the electrical grid can be found here.