The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal is a long-overdue investment in our nation’s infrastructure, workers, families, and competitiveness. A key piece in President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, the infrastructure deal includes more than $62 billion for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to deliver a more equitable clean energy future for the American people by doing the following:

  • Investing in American manufacturing and workers.
  • Expanding access to energy efficiency and clean energy for families, communities and businesses.
  • Delivering reliable, clean, and affordable power to more Americans.
  • Building the technologies of tomorrow through clean energy demonstrations.

Investing in American Manufacturing and Workers

Revitalizing domestic supply chains and America’s manufacturing leadership

For too long we have ceded ground on manufacturing to our global competitors. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal’s investments in clean energy technology supply chains will allow America to make the energy technologies of the future right here at home, boosting our competitiveness within a global clean energy market expected to reach $23 trillion by the end of the decade. These investments will create jobs up and down the supply chain—especially manufacturing jobs and skills-matched opportunities for fossil fuel workers.

The infrastructure deal will:

  • Invest more than $7 billion in the supply chain for batteries, which are essential to powering our economy with 24/7 clean, affordable, and resilient energy and transportation options. This will include producing critical minerals, sourcing materials for manufacturing, and even recycling critical materials without new extraction/mining. 
  • Provide an additional $1.5 billion for clean hydrogen manufacturing and advancing recycling RD&D.
  • Create a new $750 million grant program to support advanced energy technology manufacturing projects in coal communities.
  • Expand the authority of DOE’s Loan Program Office (LPO) to invest in projects that increase the domestic supply of critical minerals and expand LPO programs that invest in manufacturing zero-carbon technologies for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, trains, aircraft, and marine transportation.

Investing in America’s workforce

Investing in America’s workers means investing in America’s future. When combined with the Build Back Better Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will add an average of 1.5 million jobs per year, over the course of the decade, while accelerating America’s path to full employment and increasing labor force participation. These jobs will be spread across every pocket of the country, and the vast majority will not require a college degree.
The infrastructure deal will:

  • Require all construction workers on projects funded by the deal to be paid prevailing wages, according to the Davis-Bacon Act.
  • Invest hundreds of millions in workforce development, giving workers in the electric grid, clean buildings, and industrial sectors access to training in cutting-edge technologies that will spur their careers in the years to come.
  • Establish a multi-agency Energy Jobs Council to work with stakeholders and oversee the development and release of energy jobs and workforce data to inform decisions by governments, businesses, and other stakeholders at the national, state, and local level.
     

Expanding Access to Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy for Families, Communities and Businesses

Clean energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the country, and it keeps getting cheaper. Increasing access to clean energy will save families money—and for lower-income households, who already spend up to 30% of their income on energy costs, those savings are essential. At the same time, more clean energy means less carbon and air pollution, which disproportionately harms lower-income communities, and especially communities of color. Greater clean energy capacity will offer these communities cleaner air, better health outcomes, and lower healthcare bills.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will turbo-charge clean energy deployment by funding several highly effective state and local programs that will spur projects that increase access to energy efficiency to save money for American families, businesses and communities, help achieve our clean energy goals and accelerate job growth. The infrastructure deal also expands existing DOE grant and loan programs to help states weatherize homes, increase energy efficiency, and expand clean generation.

The infrastructure deal will:

  • Invest $3.5 billion in the Weatherization Assistance Program to increase energy efficiency, increase health and safety, and reduce energy costs for low-income households by hundreds of dollars every year.
  • Invest $500 million to provide cleaner schools for our children and teachers by providing energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements at public school facilities, along with a $5 billion EPA effort to replace thousands of polluting diesel school buses with electric buses. Together, these investments will reduce energy costs in our schools and improve teacher and student health by improving indoor air quality.
  • Invest $550 million in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program (EECBG) and $500 million in the State Energy Program to provide grants to communities, cities, states, U.S. territories, and Indian tribes to develop and implement clean energy programs and projects that will create jobs.

Delivering Reliable, Clean, and Affordable Power to More Americans

Bringing the electrical grid into the 21st century

Extreme weather events like the Dixie Wildfire, Hurricane Ida, and the 2021 Texas Freeze have made it clear that our existing energy infrastructure cannot endure the impacts of climate change. Modernizing and expanding the electricity grid will make our energy sector more resilient, while enabling the buildout of affordable, reliable, clean energy to support President Biden’s goal of 100% clean power by 2035.

The infrastructure deal will:

  •  Provide $11 billion in grants for states, tribes, and utilities to enhance the resilience of the electric infrastructure against disruptive events such as extreme weather and cyber attacks.
  • Establish a $2.5 billion Transmission Facilitation Program for DOE to help develop nationally significant transmission lines, increase resilience by connecting regions of the country, and improve access to cheaper clean energy sources.
  • Back a $3 billion expansion of the Smart Grid Investment Matching Grant Program, focusing on investments that improve the flexibility of the grid. These include upgrading existing transmission and distribution systems, and other actions, like deploying energy storage. Together, it will help the grid accommodate a new energy future where families and businesses often generate their own clean energy through microgrids and other distributed energy sources.

Maintaining our existing clean generation fleet

Our nation already gets 27% of its power from decades-old nuclear and hydropower facilities. These are critical sources of clean power—but as they get older and more expensive to maintain, we risk losing these major sources of pollution-free energy and good-paying jobs. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal provides funding to ensure that we can keep these clean energy sources online.

The infrastructure deal will:

  • Allocate $6 billion for the Civilian Nuclear Credit program to prevent premature retirement of existing zero-carbon nuclear plants, helping to save thousands of good-paying union jobs across the country. The program is available for plants that would otherwise retire and are certified as safe to continue operations and prioritizes plants that use domestically produced fuel.
  • Invest more than $700 million in existing hydropower facilities to improve efficiency, maintain dam safety, reduce environmental impacts, and ensure generators continue to provide emission-free electricity.

Building the Technologies of Tomorrow through Clean Energy Demonstrations

While the technologies needed to decarbonize most of our economy are both available and affordable thanks in part to decades of technology development led by DOE, further innovation is a critical component of meeting the President’s goals of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and a net-zero-carbon economy by 2050. With the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, America’s scientists and researchers will have the resources they need to demonstrate these clean energy breakthroughs and prove them out at scale.

The infrastructure deal will:

  • Provide $21.5 billion in funding for clean energy demonstrations and research hubs focused on next generation technologies needed to achieve our goal of net-zero by 2050, including:
    • $8 billion for clean hydrogen, which will turbo-charge our progress toward heavy trucking and industrial sectors that run without producing carbon pollution.
    • More than $10 billion for carbon capture, direct air capture and industrial emission reduction, providing skills-matched opportunities for fossil fuel workers.
    • $2.5 billion for advanced nuclear, which would provide 24/7 clean electricity and create good-paying jobs.
    • $1 billion for demonstration projects in rural areas and $500 million for demonstration projects in economically hard-hit communities.