Vice President Kamala Harris will travel Friday to Coppin State University, a historically Black college in Maryland, to detail the competitive clean energy grant program that the White House said would "massively" expand the capital available for projects with a low environmental footprint.
The funding comes from the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas reduction fund, a $27 billion effort to cut emissions from communities across the country, particularly low-income areas.
Some $6 billion will go to a clean communities investment accelerator that puts non-profits together with community lenders to support retrofitting homes for improved energy efficiency and zero-emission business fleets in low-income and disadvantaged communities.
The bulk of the investments, an estimated $14 billion, will go to grants for national clean-financing institutions. At least 40% of those funds will also go toward low-income, tribal communities and other under-served areas.
The administration in April outlined a series of steps meant to support disadvantaged communities that may be struggling with toxic environmental issues in their communities.
"Landfills and garbage incinerators located right in the middle of communities ... drinking water contaminated by radon and arsenic. This kind of environmental injustice goes against everything we stand for as a nation, but it continues to exist," President Joe Biden said.
Concern for low-income and under-served communities reflects sentiment from international leaders on a comprehensive effort to address climate change.
In a clean-energy progress report, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said renewable energy capacity reached its highest level ever at 340 gigawatts of new additions last year.
The IEA, however, said the energy transition is uneven, with nearly all of the sales in EVs last year, for example, coming from China, Europe and the United States, among the world's richest economies.
"The clean energy economy is rapidly taking shape, but even faster progress is needed in most areas to meet international energy and climate goals," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
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