The Rural Energy for America Program has for years helped thousands of American farmers pay for solar panels that lower their energy bills and earn them extra income. The Trump administration is putting an end to that.
The program, known as REAP, will no longer help farmers install large solar arrays on their land. Even smaller arrays could be unlikely to get funding under new restrictions on equipment made in China, as outlined in a recent internal Agriculture Department memo obtained by Canary Media.
Since 2014, the program has awarded around $1.1 billion in grants and $2.5 billion in loan guarantees for solar in rural areas nationwide, the vast majority of that on farms. Around 70% of the two-decade-old program’s funds have gone to solar projects over the last 10 years.
But on Aug. 19, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced, “USDA will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland or allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in USDA projects.”
The internal memo notes that solar projects with any of four characteristics will be ineligible for REAP loan guarantees and “disincentivized” in the point system used to award REAP grants.
Ground-mounted projects over 50 kilowatts will no longer receive loan guarantees, nor will projects on land certified as cropland by the Farm Service Agency. Loan guarantees will be denied for plots that can’t show “historical energy use,” and for “systems consisting of any component made in a country named as a foreign adversary,” according to the memo.
Large solar arrays are typically on open land that hasn’t previously consumed energy, and smaller installations powering a farm might also be in that situation, so the requirement to show historical use could be a serious blow to eligibility. And almost all solar panels include components from China, which would run afoul of the final provision.
Loan guarantees are a powerful tool for financing the utility-scale solar that provides farmers with extra revenue from selling electricity. The program comes at little cost to the federal government, since the loans are usually repaid without the financial institution needing to tap the guarantee, noted Andy Olsen, a senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law & Policy Center who has extensively analyzed REAP data.
REAP grants, meanwhile, have helped farmers build smaller solar arrays that often power their farm operations and send some energy back to the grid. It’s unclear what effect disincentivizing these projects in the REAP grant scoring system will have. Such solar arrays might not trigger the first three provisions mentioned in the USDA memo, but would likely include parts made in China.
“That’s a major wrench thrown into the works,” said Olsen, noting that the USDA is legally allowed to change the grant scoring system with a notice in the Federal Register. “It’s highly complicated REAP because few installers know where all the components of their systems come from. They’ve raised the bar to a point where it’s nearly impossible to clear it.”
It’s the latest in a string of Trump administration actions aimed at slowing down the development of solar and other clean energy projects nationwide. In July, the Republican-led Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which swiftly phases out key tax credits for the industry. Since then, the administration has issued a series of anti-renewables directives, including an Interior Department order mandating that the agency’s environmental reviews consider how much power a project produces compared to the amount of land it takes up.
Great Job Kari Lydersen & the Team @ Canary Media Source link for sharing this story.
