The Interior Department announced Thursday that it has allocated another $71 million to help electrify 13 communities across Indian Country, and two Arizona tribal utility companies are closer to bridging the power gap.
This time around, more than $7.3 million went to the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, while the Hopi Utilities Corporation got $6 million. These new awards came from the Tribal Electrification Program through the Inflation Reduction Act. Both utilities racked up more than $27 million between the first and final rounds of funding.
The Biden administration has earmarked more than $140 million in financial and technical assistance to aid tribes in transitioning to cleaner energy sources and providing power to unelectrified homes.
That’s still a problem for tribes in the Southwest.
A report authored in 2022 by the Energy Department’s Office of Indian Energy found that about a fifth of Navajo homes lack power, while more than a third of Hopi households are still without electricity. The agency estimated that less than 17,000 tribal homes remain in the dark nationwide.
