HILO (USDA) — USDA Rural Development State Director Lorraine P. Shin says grants and guaranteed loans are available to help rural businesses or agricultural producers looking to produce renewable energy or make energy-saving improvements to their facilities or farms.
Grant-only applications can be submitted at any time, but the deadline is May 18.
Applications for guaranteed loans and a combination grant and guaranteed loan can be submitted at any time, but must be received by July 2 to be considered for FY 2007 funding. There is $176.5 million in loan guarantees and $11.4 million in grants available for FY 2007. Fifty-percent of the grant funding is being reserved for applications that are a combination of guaranteed loan and grant.
Additional information is available at the local USDA Rural Development office, or on USDA’s Web site: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov.
“This program can make a big difference to rural small businesses or producers looking to finance a renewable energy system or make energy saving improvements to their facility or equipment,” Shin said. “I encourage interested business owners and producers to contact us at USDA Rural Development to learn more.”
Hawaii has been awarded $197,000 for six solar projects — out of 15 applications submitted — since the program started in 2002.
“Although the grant program is competitive nationwide, we have been able to get a good percentage of our applications funded,” Shin said.
She added, “For this year, we would like to increase the level of funding to our local agriculture and small business community to help reduce Hawaii’s dependence on fossil fuels. Also, we are putting more emphasis on funding energy efficiency projects for Hawaii.”
Energy efficiency improvement projects can be in addition to a renewable system and include undertakings such as retrofitting existing processing operations, or replacing lighting/refrigeration/electric motors with more efficient equipment.
Projects can even include building a more energy efficient facility, when the facility is used for the same purpose, is approximately the same size, and, based on the energy audit, will provide more energy savings than improving an existing facility.
Rural-based small businesses such as restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, greenhouses, cold storage businesses, manufacturing facilities, as well as any other business that requires a large amount of energy to operate, may benefit from an energy-efficient upgrade that these funds could help finance.