Under the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program, farmers and small enterprise house owners in rural areas obtain a grant to fund 50% of the price of clear vitality tasks.
Funds can be utilized for vitality manufacturing together with photo voltaic, wind and hydro energy, and for enhancing the vitality effectivity of buildings, corresponding to lighting, doorways, home windows and insulation.
Gallrein Farms in Shelbyville acquired REAP funding this week. The grant, valued at $111,778, will assist set up further photo voltaic panels on the property.
“We can use it [the grant] within the bigger funding tasks we wish to do on the farm, probably shopping for new tools, upgrading tools, increasing our greenhouses, increasing our market, and persevering with to provide again to the group, ” mentioned Gallrein Farm supervisor Gabriella Gallrein.
With the photo voltaic panel set up, Gallrein Farms expects to save lots of greater than $14,000 yearly in vitality prices, in line with USDA Rural Development State Director Tom Carew.
“[The grant] It actually helps the underside line,” Carew mentioned Monday. “It helps scale back our dependence on fossil fuels. And it is a increase to the economic system.”
The funding comes from the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which helps clear vitality initiatives to fight the continued local weather disaster. Kentucky is getting hotter and wetter due to local weather change attributable to the burning of fossil fuels.
Last yr, IRA-funded renewable vitality tasks saved Kentucky greater than $3 billion, in line with a report by the US Congress Joint Economic Committee.
Ken Slattery is an vitality guide for EightTwenty, the Indiana-based photo voltaic panel installer for Gallrein Farms. According to him, the IRA is the rationale why photo voltaic vitality is cheaper.
“We want that type of assist from the federal authorities,” Slattery mentioned. “This system [at Gallrein] with out the grant it could have paid for itself in 9 or 10 years. With the grant, it pays for itself nearly instantly. “
Gallrein Farms, like many farms, burns fossil fuels to maintain them going, Gallrein mentioned, and he hopes a renewable vitality supply — like photo voltaic panels — can offset their carbon footprint.
“I believe lots of people do not understand how a lot energy a enterprise can have,” Gallrein mentioned. “And particularly a enterprise like this the place we’ve a market. We have over 10 greenhouses. We have grain bins. We have all this tools. And we’d like vitality for that. So it is good to see- let’s have a look at how [solar] vitality can be utilized to assist run this place.”
Applications for REAP can be found on-line from the top of June via September. Applicants should have a enterprise in a metropolis with a inhabitants of fifty,000 individuals or much less.
