09.28.23

Cantwell Announces Colville & Spokane Tribes to Strengthen, Modernize Electrical Grid With $5.44M in Federal Grants

Cantwell: Investments to help lower energy costs while helping ensure the lights stay on during an emergency

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) announced that the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation received $4.31 million and the Spokane Tribe of Indians received $1.13 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help strengthen and modernize the Tribes’ power grids against wildfires, extreme weather, and other natural disasters.

“When it comes to facing the worsening threat of severe wildfires, both the Colville Tribes and the Spokane Tribe are on the front lines. These awards will help the Tribes fortify their energy infrastructure -- ensuring the lights stay on at critical government and community facilities during an emergency -- while shrinking energy bills for tribal members’ homes and businesses and creating skilled jobs in the energy sector.”

The Colville and Spokane Tribes will use these grants to plan and execute projects that:

  1. Reduce the likelihood and frequency of seasonal energy outages to critical community facilities such as government offices, schools, and health care facilities.
  2. Improve energy cost savings for low-income tribal members, tribal operations, and businesses.
  3. Enhance grid independence to mitigate impacts from disruptive events such as extreme weather and wildfires.

The funding comes from DOE’s Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grant program, which was authorized by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). The BIL included multiple historic investments championed by Sen. Cantwell to make our nation's electricity grid more reliable, resilient, and able to integrate renewable energy sources and stand up to increasingly frequent and intense weather events. Sen. Cantwell authored three major transmission provisions ultimately incorporated into the BIL:

  1. $2.5 billion to establish a new Transmission Facilitation Program that will support new transmission lines or upgrade existing lines by authorizing DOE to buy a portion of the planned line’s electricity capacity, which DOE may then sell back to the market, after the project has been developed;
  2. $3 billion to restart a Smart Grid Investment Grant Program, first authored by Sen. Cantwell in 2007, that will boost private sector investment in a range of technologies needed to modernize our nation's grid;
  3. $10 billion increase in borrowing authority for Bonneville Power Association (BPA) to assist financing of the construction, acquisition, and replacement of certain parts of the Federal Columbia River Power System. In July, BPA announced it would move forward with over $2 billion in electricity grid improvement projects in the Pacific Northwest thanks to this increased borrowing authority secured by Sen. Cantwell.