The U.S. Department of Agriculture will discontinue providing funds for solar and wind projects, Secretary Brooke Rollins announced on in a post on X.
Through its Rural Energy for America (REAP) grant program, the USDA has provided over $4 billion to fund energy projects in rural and farming communities.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 added over $2 billion in funding for the program through Fiscal Year 2031. Post-IRA, over $1 billion in funds supported 6,822 projects from 2023 to 2025, contributing an estimated $2.75 billion to rural economic development.
The USDA Secretary shared the news on X:
“BIG NEWS for American Farmers!
I just announced in Lebanon, TN – effective immediately – American farmland will NO LONGER use taxpayer dollars to build solar farms.
Millions of acres of prime farmland is left unusable so Green New Deal subsidized solar panels can be built. This destruction of our farms and prime soil is taking away the futures of the next generation of farmers and the future of our country.
Starting today, USDA will no longer deploy programs to fund solar or wind projects on productive farmland, ending massive taxpayer handouts. Also ENDING the use of panels made by foreign adversaries like China. This is AMERICA FIRST.”
The REAP grant program provides guaranteed loan financing and grant funding to agricultural producers and rural small businesses for renewable energy systems or to make energy efficiency improvements. The program was officially created in 2008 through the Farm Bill when Congress combined an energy efficiency program with one that focused on renewable energy.
“With REAP grants covering up to 50% of project costs and tax credits accounting for another 30-40%, farms can access solar with minimal investment,” said Inigo Rengifo Melia, CEO of Concentro.
T&H Farms, a poultry operation in Fairmont, North Carolina, is an example of the program’s benefits. The third-generation family farm installed a 590 kW rooftop solar installation with help from the USDA REAP program.
“This solar project helps us offset rising energy costs and provides us the flexibility to pursue additional initiatives that benefit the quality and efficiency of our operation,” said Logan Hoffner, one of the owners of T&H Farms.
And in New Hampshire, Blasty Bough Brewing Company in Epson, New Hampshire secured a REAP grant that enabled the brewery to install a 182-module, 87 kW ground-mount solar array that offsets more than 100% of their energy consumption.
The brewery’s owner estimated it saves about $23,000 a year in electricity costs. The system, which has a 25-year warranty and 40-year estimated lifespan, is offsetting 69 tons of CO2 a year, the equivalent to removing 15 gasoline-powered vehicles from the road for a year or avoiding 69,629 pounds of coal combustion. The payback period is estimated to be less than five years.
About 424,000 acres of rural land were affected by solar and wind development in 2020, less than 0.05% of the nearly 900 million acres used for farmland, said a 2024 USDA study. The study found that most of that land stayed in agricultural development after the projects were developed.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.