In the first 5 years of the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), grant awards tended to be concentrated in a few states. These states had invested in policies and programs which helped their farms and rural businesses develop their clean energy resources with help from REAP.

For the 2009 REAP program, the USDA has tried to address this problem by changing how it allocates award funds. Now, each individual state Rural Development office has been provided an allocation of funds for its state. This will speed up awards of some grants and all loan guarantees. USDA has allocated a total of $27.7 million (46% of overall funding) to the states.

Enhancement made by Congress to the program, including energy technical assistance and feasibility studies, will also help states that have lagged in winning funding. In depth program information can be found at our “REAP Frequently Asked Questions” page.

If a given state’s allocation is exhausted, it can request additional funds from the national office “reserve,” but only for loan guarantees or grant-loan guarantee combinations. After the state allocation is used up, only loan guarantees will be funded from the state. The reserve has a total of $11.9 million (20% of overall funding).

If a state doesn’t use its allocation by September 8, 2009, the funds are pooled with other allocations and returned to the national office for distribution in final awards for FY2009.

The state allocation is one of five allocations created by the USDA to implement the new program enhancements added in the 2008 Farm Bill. The following table shows how the USDA has allocated total program funding:

REAP Budgetary Allocation, Fiscal Year 2009

The budget for each state can be found at the back of this official notice on the allocations.