$1.5 billion in US government funding will go toward energy grid projects in these three states

Four transmission projects serving the US southwest, southeast and New England will receive $1.5 billion in funding to improve grid resilience and connect customers to clean energy, the government said Thursday.

Funding for the second phase of the Transmission Overhaul Plan comes from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill and will power nearly 1,000 miles (1609 km) of new transmission lines in Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

“We’re using it to help big transmission projects get off the ground, projects that otherwise wouldn’t be built,” David Turk, the US deputy energy secretary, told reporters on the phone.

The investment will create nearly 9,000 jobs, the Department of Energy said.

The first phase of the program, announced last year, supports grid projects in the western and northeastern states.

Turk said that his department will buy electricity capacity from the lines and sell it again when new customers come.

The projects are:

-The Aroostook Renewable Project that will give New England access to wind energy produced in Maine

-Cimarron Link is the current 400-mile (644 km) direct line from Texas that will bring wind and solar energy to growing areas in eastern Oklahoma.

-Southern Spirit will build a 320-mile (515 km) line connecting the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ grid for the first time with grids in southeastern power markets to prevent outages during extreme weather events like the deadly Hurricane Uri that hit Texas in 2022 .

—Southline, to build a transmission line to bring electricity from wind power from western New Mexico across the desert Southwest.

The Department of Energy said its National Transmission Planning Study found that the US will need to roughly double or triple transmission capacity in the three decades to 2050 to meet growth and reliability needs.

It said hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings could be realized through expanded transfers and regionalization.

—Timothy Gardner, Reuters