DOE Awards $66 Million in Grants

The U.S. Department of Energy announced 17 states and territories to receive awards totaling $66 million from the Energy Efficiency Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) Capitalization Grant Program. The program provides funding to states and territories to establish or increase revolving funds enabling them to issue loans and grants for energy efficiency audits, upgrades and retrofits to increase energy efficiency and improve the comfort of buildings.  The RLF program will help these states and territories to make capital available to fund energy efficiency projects in public buildings and will encourage financial institutions to reduce energy costs.  

This is the third round of awards from the program. DOE expects to announce additional awards later this year. Successful programs will leverage private capital across commercial and residential sectors, accelerate and maximize energy savings, and create good-paying jobs.  

Grantees include:  

• Arizona will use the funds to provide grants and loans to fund energy efficiency projects, including audits and retrofits in the commercial sector, with a commitment to maximizing benefits to low-income and disadvantaged communities (Award amount: $1,690,280).  
• Georgia will establish a new revolving loan fund for the residential sector, with a primary focus on providing benefits to low-income residents (Award amount: $2,453,810).   
• Iowa will create a new revolving loan fund for commercial and residential entities. The program will target multi-family housing throughout Iowa and assist in upgrading from inefficient baseboard heating to more energy-efficient ductless mini-split systems (Award amount: $7,068,920).  
• Puerto Rico will use the funds to implement a loan loss reserve fund to stimulate?lending?for?energy?efficiency,?solar,?and?battery?storage for the residential sector. The reserve fund will expand access to green financing opportunities for low and moderate-income communities and ensure that cost savings and reliability benefits are realized by a broader segment of the Puerto Rican population (Award amount: $1,070,490).   
• Texas will establish a new revolving loan fund that operationally matches their existing Texas LoanSTAR revolving loan program. Texas will also provide a grant opportunity to provide free ASHRAE Level II energy audit services to Community Centers (Award amount: $22,365,890).  
• U.S. Virgin Islands will implement a loan loss reserve fund and interest rate buydowns to enable lenders to offer lower interest rate loans for residential and commercial renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in the territory. They will also create a grant program to support residential and commercial energy audits to help address key energy challenges in the territory such as high energy costs and vulnerability to natural disasters by identifying energy efficiency opportunities and implementing measures to reduce energy consumption and costs (Award amount: $576,170).  

Other awards include:  

• Colorado ($1,631,220)  
• Delaware ($746,400)  
• Kansas ($6,706,230)  
• Maine ($863,110)  
• Massachusetts ($1,894,760)  
• Minnesota ($1,884,300).    
• Nevada ($1,043,290)  
• New Jersey ($2,383,510)  
• New Mexico ($5,692,530)  
• Oklahoma ($7,592,300)  
• Rhode Island ($762,790)

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