Search Results for keywords:"Rural Energy for America Program"

The Rural Business-Cooperative Service of the USDA released a correction to a previous notice about the Rural Energy for America Program. The original notice contained mistakes regarding the points given for the size of the funding request and for applicants who hadn’t received grants or loan commitments in the past two years. The corrections specify that applicants who haven’t recently received funding can earn 5 extra points. Additionally, smaller grant requests can qualify for 10 extra points, with a total maximum score possible of 100 points for those applications.

The United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Development (RD) division is changing its funding opportunities to remove references to the previous Administration's key priorities and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) criteria. This update follows an Executive Order titled "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing," issued in January 2025. Programs affected by this change will no longer consider these previous criteria for application scoring. Additionally, the Rural Energy for America Program's funding notice is corrected to include $50 million from the 2018 Farm Bill that was previously omitted.

The Department of Agriculture has asked the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to review a requirement for collecting information under the Paperwork Reduction Act. They are inviting public comments by January 15, 2025, about whether this information collection is necessary and how it might be improved. The focus is on the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which helps rural businesses and agricultural producers reduce energy costs with grants and loans. Comments can be submitted online, and there are specific rules about how the collected information must display a valid OMB control number.