The Tribal Energy Fairness Act of 2025 would change several federal energy laws to support Indian Tribes when they apply for Department of Energy loans, loan guarantees, and grants. The bill lets the Secretary of Energy use DOE-appropriated funds to do financial and technical assessments for loan or loan guarantee applications for eligible projects, including renewable energy and transmission projects on or near Indian land and projects carried out off Indian land. The bill limits those assessments to not more than $500,000 per application. It also removes a statutory restriction that had limited access to certain DOE tribal programs and explicitly includes projects carried out by an Indian Tribe on or near Indian land or outside Indian land.
The bill changes the Preventing Outages and Enhancing the Resilience of the Electric Grid grant program in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to add or clarify how Indian Tribes apply for and use grants. Tribes may submit a plan to carry out projects themselves or a plan to award grants to eligible entities. The bill requires the Secretary to ensure grants follow the applicable tribal plan and adds a savings provision saying a Tribe is not required to award grants to outside eligible entities. It adds "distributed generation" and transmission-system-connected electric generation to eligible activities and states that Tribes and Tribal-owned eligible entities that receive grants under the program are not required to provide matching funds.
Finally, the bill amends a cost-sharing exemption in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to add grants awarded to an Indian Tribe under the grid resilience grant program to the list of exempted items.
No publicly available information.
No publicly available information.