Dive Brief:
- The Department of Energy is offering $425 million in a second round of funding to advance clean energy manufacturing and support the reduction of industrial emissions.
- The money will go to small- and medium-sized manufacturers focused on producing and recycling clean energy products to establish, re-equip or expand facilities, as well as to help plants reduce emissions and create low-carbon materials, according to a March 8 announcement.
- The funding, made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is aimed at manufacturers based in former coal communities and builds on a first round of projects granted $275 million last year.
Dive Insight:
The program is aimed specifically at communities that have been affected by the country’s shift away from coal. Projects under the program must occur in communities where coal mines have closed since Dec. 31, 1999, or where coal-fired power plants have closed since Dec. 31, 2009.
A department mapping tool of eligible communities shows many of the locations centralized in states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky in the eastern portion of the U.S. and Wyoming, Montana, Colorado and Utah in the west.
Coal mining employment has plummeted significantly in recent decades, with fewer than 45,000 miners remaining in the U.S. as of 2022, down by more than half compared to 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The program aims to help create clean energy-based jobs in communities that were formerly focused on coal mining.
“DOE is utilizing the historic investments in President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to expand economic opportunities to ensure former coal communities can take full advantage of the clean energy transition and continue their leading role in powering our nation,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
Manufacturers are struggling to find clean energy workers this year as demand outpaces the available labor pool, especially in jobs like solar panel installation specialists, automation engineers, machinists, welders and even installation workers.
Projects supported through the department’s first funding round in November stretched across seven states and included makers of clean energy products such as window glass, grid components and wind turbines.
The Department of Energy has been one of the most active federal departments to dole out BIL and Inflation Reduction Act funding. Last week, the department gave a $2 billion lithium loan to Lithium Americas to build lithium processing facilities at its upcoming project in Nevada.
Concept papers are due by April 8 and full applications are due by June 24.
