Education departments in Alabama, Arizona, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and the Northern Mariana Islands received more than $32 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Supporting America’s School Infrastructure grant program. The funding is designed to assist school districts in improving their facilities by addressing energy needs.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, K-12 school districts spend $8 billion annually on energy costs. Aging facilities combined with limited school budgets can result in deferred maintenance of facilities, resulting in nearly $270 billion needed for infrastructure repairs.
Schools can use clean energy tax credits for qualifying projects or investments, such as the investment tax credit, production tax credit, commercial clean vehicle credits and alternative fuel vehicle refueling property credits. School districts can utilize the credits in combination with grants and loans to reduce the cost of improvement projects. Projects that can be supported by the tax credits include geothermal systems to heat campuses and community buildings, solar panels on school roofs to provide electricity, and microgrids with solar and energy storage to support facilities during grid outages. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department also said schools can channel these credits toward buying electric school buses or other clean energy vehicles and charging equipment.
Mackenna Moralez is the associate editor of the facilities market.
