Utilities and Local Governments
How We Work with Utilities and Local Governments
The Nevada Clean Energy Fund partners with utilities and local governments to achieve their clean energy objectives, ranging from energy efficiency to community solar to fleet electrification. From residents and community groups to contractors and suppliers, we work to strengthen local relationships, expand access to cleaner energy choices, and build equitable energy solutions, especially for those who have historically been hard to reach.
We leverage our deep expertise in the clean energy and finance industries to design and implement programs in partnership with utilities and local governments, from the early scoping and design stages to the identification of financial resources and modeling of project economics to rigorous measurement and evaluation against objectives throughout program implementation.
Established by state legislation as Nevada's "green bank" in 2017, we implement proven solutions and programmatic models that have been successfully deployed by our Green Bank counterparts for over a decade in other states.
Funding Opportunities for Utilities and Local Governments
Utilities and local governments have several potential sources of funding available to them to implement their clean energy goals, including:
- Federal grants: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by US Congress in 2021 has made significant amounts of funding available for clean energy and grid infrastructure upgrades. The list of funding buckets administered by the US Department of Energy is available here. In addition, Nevada GrantLab provides curated e-mail digests of federal, state, and local funding opportunity announcements.
- Federal tax credits: Several tax credits for clean energy (including rooftop and community-scale solar and battery storage), energy efficiency, and electric vehicles are available. These tax credits are now accessible to governments (including public schools) and nonprofit entities as well through "direct pay" from the IRS.
- US Department of Agriculture (USDA): For utilities that serve customers in rural areas, the USDA has several buckets of funding available for clean energy and electrical infrastructure projects, including from the Community Facilities Direct Loan and Grant Program, Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), and Rural Energy Savings Program.
- Nevada State Infrastructure Bank: The Nevada State Infrastructure Bank is a state government entity that provides low-cost financing to Nevada state agencies, local governments, Tribal governments, and non-profit organizations for priority infrastructure projects. It is currently accepting applications.
