On Earth Day 2024 C.E., the Biden administration announced $7 billion in federal grants to bring solar power to more than 900,000 low- and middle-income households across the United States. The awards, distributed through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All program, mark one of the largest single investments in residential clean energy access in U.S. history.
At a glance
- Solar for All grants: Sixty recipients were named, including 49 state-level projects, six serving Native American tribes, and five multi-state initiatives — covering rooftop solar installations and community solar gardens.
- Carbon emissions reduction: The funded projects are projected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over time.
- Household savings: Participating families are expected to save a combined $350 million annually on energy bills, freeing up income for other needs.
Where the money comes from
The $7 billion comes from the Solar for All program, which is part of the $27 billion “green bank” created under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 C.E. That law directed money specifically toward neighborhoods most burdened by pollution and climate change — communities that have historically been the last to benefit from clean energy investment.
EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe described the goal plainly: get funds into communities, build local skills, create jobs, and let people keep more of their money each month. The EPA had previously awarded the remaining $20 billion of the green bank to nonprofits and community development banks for projects including heat pumps, EV charging stations, and community cooling centers.
The grants can fund a range of projects — from solar panels on individual rooftops to shared community solar gardens that let renters and apartment dwellers access clean power without installing anything themselves.
What this means for underserved communities
For decades, the upfront cost of solar installation has kept it out of reach for lower-income households, even as wealthier homeowners captured federal tax credits and long-term savings. Solar for All is designed to close that gap directly.
Among the grant recipients are state programs to put solar on homes and college residences in West Virginia, a nonprofit running a solar lease program in Mississippi, and workforce training initiatives in South Carolina. Six grants go to projects serving Native American tribes — a meaningful step given that tribal communities often face some of the highest energy costs and least reliable grid access in the country.
The announcement was made at Prince William Forest Park in northern Virginia, established in 1936 C.E. as a summer camp for low-income youth from Washington as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. The setting was intentional — Biden modeled his American Climate Corps on that New Deal precedent, and he used the occasion to announce nearly 2,000 Climate Corps positions across 36 states, including roles developed in partnership with the North American Building Trades Unions.
Green jobs at the center of the plan
The Climate Corps expansion matters because clean energy investment only delivers long-term community benefit if local people are trained to build, install, and maintain the systems. The union partnership signals an effort to connect this work to established wage and safety standards rather than creating a separate, lower-tier green jobs track.
White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi described the program as a way to “unlock economic opportunity to create pathways to middle-class-supporting careers, to save people money and improve their quality of life.” For communities that have absorbed the health and economic costs of fossil fuel infrastructure for generations, that framing carries real weight.
Challenges ahead
The green bank has faced Republican opposition in Congress, with critics raising concerns about accountability and the appropriate role of federal funding in energy markets. Those political headwinds are real, and the long-term durability of these programs will depend on factors well beyond the 2024 C.E. announcement. Solar energy also still carries high upfront installation costs even with subsidies, and reaching the most remote or hardest-to-serve households will require sustained implementation work — not just grant awards. Still, the scale of this investment and its explicit focus on equity represent a meaningful departure from clean energy policy that has historically flowed toward those who needed it least.
As solar becomes one of the fastest-growing power sources globally, programs like this one matter not just for emissions but for who gets to share in the economic gains of the energy transition. The households receiving these grants stand to benefit for decades — and the workers trained through the Climate Corps will carry those skills long after any single administration ends.
Read more
For more on this story, see: NBC News
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights and COP30: 160 million hectares protected
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- The Good News for Humankind archive on renewable energy
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