The Environmental Protection Agency announced today that $300 million in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants will be awarded to Tribal communities throughout the U.S. and its territories, including here in Maine.
The Passamaquoddy Tribe was among the selected applicants for the grant; the tribe will receive $7.4 million to begin work on a community microgrid in the Passamaquoddy Tribe Indian Township. Microgrids are small-scale energy systems that link elements like solar panels and storage batteries to provide localized power, and in some cases, the ability to go off-grid.
The grant program, funded as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, is part of a larger effort by the Biden administration to update national energy grids, increase sources of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program is distributing nearly $5 billion as part of this effort.
The EPA received 110 applications, and selected 33 tribal recipients to receive funding for this round of applications. The process was "guided by Indian country, for Indian country," Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said on Thursday, emphasizing that in this process, the communities were telling the government what they needed for a clean energy transition, and not the other way around.
The microgrid project is vital to the Passamaquoddy Tribe's 20-year plan to reach energy independence and carbon neutrality, it said.
“Tribal elders see the ways the climate has changed from when they were young," the grant stated. "Ice forms later and the ice out is much earlier, limiting ice fishing days. The range of the brown ash is moving northwards, and will continue, until no brown ash is able to be collected and pounded to produce beautiful baskets. Sustenance foods such as moose now suffer from large winter tick infestations that would normally die off in hard winters, to where fewer calves are surviving the winter. Invasive species such as variable leaved water milfoil now have a foothold in lakes surrounding the tribe, and early ice outs are allowing more sunlight to reach the bottom giving these pests an early start to the growing season."
"Because of these changes the Tribe perhaps has more to lose and greater gains to be had by reducing GHG [sic] emissions, and stopping the global increase in temperatures," the Passamaquoddy writes.