September 14, 2005: 2005 USDA Grant Awards Announced

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced the selection of 150 applicants to receive almost $21 million in USDA Rural Development grant assistance for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in 32 states. These grants, totaling $20,851,265 will be used to leverage $172 million in projects. The program received more applications than ever with a total of 388 grant requests for over $62 million. USDA also announced the program's first loan guarantees for $10.1 million for each of two projects ($20.2 million total). Minnesota and Iowa projects combined to received nearly half of the money funds awarded with $5.7 million going to Iowa projects and $4 million going to Minnesota projects. Iowa and Nebraska ties for the largest total number of projects with 37 each.

Funding for Wind Energy Projects
$19.2 million of the funds awarded went to renewable energy projects and $1.6 millions went to energy efficiency projects. More than half of the total money went to wind energy projects, including $11,251,373 for large wind turbine projects and $101,157 for small wind turbine projects. Of the 228 applications for renewable energy projects, 85 were for wind energy projects (67 large wind, 18 small wind. Of the wind applications, 46 received awards (40 large and 6 small).

• Read the USDA press release here.
  
• The full list of recipients is available from USDA here: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rd/newsroom/2005/9006GrantRecipients.pdf.
  
• See http://www.windustry.org/farmbill/9006awards.htm for a detailed list of the wind energy project awards. (Amounts less than $100,000 are for small wind turbine projects.)