The US will pay for installing solar panels in hospitals and schools after disasters

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay to install solar panels on schools, hospitals and other public buildings rebuilt after disasters, making them more resilient to future disasters and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The change, which will be announced Tuesday, reflects the emergency agency's decision to use federal dollars to expand renewable energy as it helps address worsening climate shocks.

The number of billion-dollar weather disasters continues to rise, straining the country's response capacity and the ability of local officials to continue providing basic services to residents.

“When you install solar panels, you create more energy independence,” Deanne Criswell, FEMA administrator, said in an interview.

The change comes amid major shifts in America's response to disasters. Insurers are withdrawing from risk areas. People donate directly to survivors through the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, although that money largely benefits the wealthy. FEMA is overhauling its programs to help individual disaster survivors after recognizing that current programs often fail to provide adequate support.

It's unclear how many state and local governments will take FEMA up on its offer to add clean energy to rebuild facilities. After a major disaster, the agency typically reimburses state, local, tribal or territorial governments for 75 percent of the costs of rebuilding or repairing structures such as schools, hospitals, fire stations, libraries and other buildings. FEMA has paid for more than 105,000 such projects over the past decade.

That 75 percent reimbursement would now apply to additional costs for adding solar panels and other energy-related improvements, such as heat pumps, batteries or energy-efficient appliances. But state or local officials would still have to cover 25 percent of the costs. And they would not be required to participate.

A spokeswoman for FEMA said it has no estimate of how many state and local governments would take advantage of the new options, which are funded under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

John Podesta, a senior adviser on clean energy innovation to President Biden, said the change will be only a small part of the president's goal of cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below levels by 2030. 2005 to reduce. far from that goal: emissions have fallen by about 17 percent since 2005.

But the new policy shows the Biden administration's commitment to pursuing emissions reductions wherever possible, Mr. Podesta said in an interview. “When we say the whole government is involved, we mean it,” he said.

The main impact of the new policy, according to RMI, a clean energy research organization, is that it could create “resilience hubs” – places where residents could gather after a disaster and that would still have power even if electricity grid goes out. exhausted.

If a school or other community building has solar panels to generate electricity and batteries to store it, that building could serve as a refuge for people whose homes lack electricity, said Alisa Petersen, the federal policy manager for the RMI program team in the United States. And if the building also has energy-efficient appliances such as heat pumps, it can serve more people for longer.

The promise of FEMA's new policy, Ms. Petersen said, “is to take buildings that have been victims of a disaster and make them resilient – ​​so that next time people actually have a place to go during the disaster. ”