The Eastern Shoshone Housing Authority was recently awarded almost $8 million in funding through the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Tribal Electrification Program (TEP). It aims to build up green electricity infrastructure around the country and will be used to purchase, assemble and install solar for homes on the Wind River Reservation.
According to a report from the Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy, more than 16,000 tribal homes across the country were not electrified in 2022.
TEP aims to change that and has committed $150 million to support tribes in building that infrastructure using clean energy over the next five years. It’s part of the Biden-Harris Inflation Reduction Act and Justice40 Initiative, which funnels investments into communities that are disproportionately impacted by pollution and climate change.
Charles Washakie is the executive director of the Eastern Shoshone Housing Authority (ESHA) in Fort Washakie. He said the grant was highly competitive – only 13 tribes received funding this round – and there’s a real need for more affordable energy infrastructure for homes.
“ We have a lot of people out there off the grid, like eight or nine families off the grid,” he said. “Our elders, they're on fixed income and their light bills are $300 or $400 a month.”
Gilbert Riche is ESHA’s housing services director. He said the hope is that the new solar projects can help lower those costs and other high bills connected to increasingly hot temperatures.
" On the Wind River, there's a climate hazard of significant heat. Our energy bills are really high in the summertime,” he said.
According to Riche, some of the TEP funding will help bring electricity to a 24-unit development that EHSA has been working on, as well as building solar microgrids or stand-alone roof systems for residential homes. He said the grant is only the start as they try to upgrade homes to make them as energy efficient as possible.
“In the future, we're looking at climate resiliency grants as our next step to get the homes more affordable and more habitable,” he said.
The seeds for the TEP funding were first planted when ESHA attended the inaugural Wyoming Federal Funding Summit in Sheridan in 2023. There, they met Levi Purdum, the director of the nonprofit Wyoming Energy Co-op, which specializes in energy efficiency and electrification.
Together, the two organizations started to look into what state and federal grants might help support renewable resource development on the Wind River Reservation and landed on TEP.
Purdum grew up in Lander and said ESHA is “the perfect partner” for making those changes happen on the ground.
“ESHA is already in the business of helping people, supporting people with affordable housing and giving them pathways to home ownership,” he said. “If we want to help people that need help and that have expressed that they want help, EHSA knows who they are. We're ready to just roll forward and say, ‘We want to help improve the efficiency of your home.’”
In Purdum’s opinion, the solar-oriented funding is an exciting chance to prove that residential-scale solar can be a viable path forward. He said EHSA applied for the maximum award amount in their original application, which aimed to assist up to 300 households. They’re currently figuring out how far their nearly $8 million will go.
“We're an energy state and I feel like this is an opportunity to really demonstrate – not just to communities, but also to the state – the potential value and the application of solar working and and benefiting people's lives,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Housing Authority also received a million dollars from TEP’s first round of funding. That money is earmarked for planning purposes and will go towards identifying who needs electricity support, as well as workforce development and training on the Wind River Reservation.
ESHA Executive Director Washakie said it’s been a team effort to get the funding in the first place – and they’re keeping an eye on the bigger picture.
“At the end of the five years [of the grant funding], I want this entity to be sustainable and we can keep assisting people,” he said. “It won't be over in five years. We want to keep going long term.”
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