FRESNO COUNTY – A big funding in renewable vitality initiatives has led to 2 native companies receiving grants to construct important photo voltaic manufacturing in Reedley and Fowler.
Through a program generally known as the Rural Energy for America Project, or REAP, California Growers, LLC, and Sunny Truck and RV Wash acquired grant funds to construct photo voltaic vitality initiatives. The joint initiatives will permit each companies to considerably cut back vitality prices and permit for better flexibility within the native grid draw.
The bigger of the 2 initiatives is a photo voltaic panel mission put in on the roof of the California Growers packing home in Reedley. The grant will present $712,994 to construct the mission. When accomplished, the photo voltaic mission will generate as much as 873,192 kilowatt-hours per 12 months, sufficient to energy 82 houses.
The Sunny Truck and RV Wash mission acquired a small quantity of funding, totaling solely $63,298, which solely helps offset the price of constructing and buying photo voltaic photovoltaic panels. The accomplished system will present 64,186 kWh per 12 months, sufficient to energy 5 households. This system helps to scale back the prices related to working a truck wash which is a excessive vitality consuming enterprise.
The funds come from a federal push by the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris titled Investing in Rural America by way of the Inflation Reduction Act. Nationwide, the REAP program has supplied $145 million in grant funding to greater than 700 initiatives. Fifteen initiatives are positioned in California.
The REAP program is only one a part of the Investing in Rural America program. In October 2023, Biden and Harris introduced greater than $5 billion in grants to enhance rural America. The grants will fund issues like high-speed web entry, climate-smart agriculture, renewable vitality initiatives and rural financial improvement applications.
The administration promoted the grant program as the biggest funding in rural America for the reason that New Deal, which was a program in response to the Great Depression beneath President Franklin D. Roosevelt that led to a number of giant jobs initiatives such because the Hoover Dam.
In May 2024, Biden introduced funding for extra grants for rural communities by way of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, a large $65 billion spending plan that may concentrate on clear consuming water initiatives, highway development and clear vitality initiatives. About $1 billion might be spent in an effort to help agricultural markets to assist rural dairies, meat processors and small companies by introducing extra competitors.
According to a truth sheet produced by The White House, 4 meat packers management 85% of the US provide harming ranchers by limiting choices and artificially decreasing costs whereas additionally harming client by artificially growing the value paid by the shop. The objective of this system is to encourage the event of processors to interrupt the dominance of enormous company meat packers, thus permitting farmers to get higher charges and cut back prices for customers.