The US Department of Energy has made US$7 million available for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects on tribal lands.
Funding bids are being invited for projects ranging from community to facility-scale in size, encompassing all the main renewable energy technologies, including solar.
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The DOE said tribal lands in the US contain about 5% of all the country’s renewable energy resources, equating to 9 million megawatts of potential installed renewable energy capacity.
Tribal communities are therefore well placed to capitalise on these resources to meet economic development, environmental and energy security objectives, the DOE said.
Under the energy generation strand of the funding, the DOE said it would back projects that provide power, heating or cooling to a number of buildings in a tribal community or to the whole community. Systems must have a minimum size of 50kW.
Since 2002 the DOE said it had invested nearly US$50 million in 184 tribal clean energy projects.
US-based utility-scale PV developer, First Solar, is building a 250MW plant on land belonging to the Moapa Paiute Tribe in Nevada.