Yesterday President Biden was in Westby Wisconsin at the Vernon County Electric Coop to announce some big news for all Dairyland Power Coop customers and Wisconsin residents.
President Biden’s climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, provided a historic $7.3 billion funding for carbon reductions through the USDA’s Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program. This is the largest investment in rural electricity since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936.
Yesterday, the White House and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the winners of the grants and loans. 16 rural electric cooperatives, including Wisconsin’s Dairyland Power Coop, will receive funding. The New ERA program will fund investments in renewable energy, storage, transmission, and large-scale emissions reductions. This funding will allow these leading electric cooperatives—serving one-fifth of rural Americans—to accelerate the adoption of affordable and reliable clean energy, improving resilience and lowering costs for their members.
Dairyland Power Coop will receive almost $573 million to procure 1,080 megawatts (MWs) of clean energy, including power purchase agreements for four solar installations and four wind power installations across rural Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa.
What this massive investment means:
- Dairyland customers’ electric rates are estimated to lower by 42 percent over 10 years than they would have been without the New ERA funding.
- The award will drive an estimated $2.1 billion in clean energy investments throughout the region
- Pollution will be reduced by an estimated 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually– the equivalent of taking 729,000 gasoline-powered cars off the road every year– or 90 million tons over the lifespan of the projects.
Thank you, President Biden for bringing these investments to Wisconsin!