The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are launching a new initiative to help farmers cut costs and increase income using underutilized renewable technologies, including smaller-scale wind projects. Through the Rural and Agricultural Income and Savings from Renewable Energy (RAISE) initiative, USDA is setting an initial goal of helping 400 individual farmers deploy smaller-scale wind projects using USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). This goal is only possible because of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provided more than $144 million in grant funding for underutilized technologies through the REAP program.
Additionally, DOE is announcing a total of $4 million in related funding, including $2.5 million to support the testing, certification and commercialization of the latest distributed wind technologies including for the agricultural sector, and $1.5 million to support outreach and the identification and development of new business models for farmers to save money and earn income deploying these technologies.
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