Tribal Energy Fairness Act of 2025
The Tribal Energy Fairness Act of 2025 proposes a set of changes intended to increase American Indian Tribes’ access to federal energy financing and to strengthen tribal involvement in energy and grid resilience projects. Key elements include: (1) expanding the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Tribal Loan Guarantee Program to allow DOE to use funds for financial and technical assessments of loan/loan guarantee applications (up to a $500,000 cap per application); (2) broadening the scope of “double benefit” restrictions to cover a wider set of tribal energy projects, including those off tribal lands; (3) restructuring and expanding the IIJA-based grant program for grid resilience to require tribal applications with flexible planning options, and to give tribes more control over how funds are distributed to eligible entities; (4) extending cost-sharing exemptions to include grants awarded to Indian Tribes under IIJA; and (5) ensuring that tribes or tribally owned entities receiving these grants are not required to provide matching funds. The overall aim is to reduce barriers to financing, improve energy reliability, and give tribes greater autonomy in managing and distributing energy funding. The bill is introduced in the Senate (S. 1181) by Senators Schatz and Curtis and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It would update and realign several statutory provisions across the Energy Policy Act of 1992, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to reflect these changes.
Key Points
- 1Expanded DOE tribal loan guarantee program financing
- 2- DOE may use appropriated funds to conduct financial and technical assessments for loan/loan guarantee applications to support eligible tribal energy projects, including renewable energy and transmission projects on or near Indian lands and eligible projects off tribal land.
- 3- The DOE may spend up to $500,000 per single application for these assessments.
- 4Denial of double benefit restrictions broadened
- 5- The bill amends the “double benefit” provisions to include Indian Tribe projects on or near Indian land and outside Indian land, ensuring these projects are considered under updated restrictions and program rules.
- 6Grid resilience funding: tribal role enhanced
- 7- IIJA Section 40101(d) grant eligibility and administration are restructured to require tribal applications with plans describing how they will use funding (whether the Tribe executes projects or distributes grants to eligible entities).
- 8- The plan descriptions and oversight language are clarified to allow tribal discretion in distributing funds, with a savings provision ensuring tribes are not required to award grants to all subcategories of eligible entities.
- 9- The bill removes a hard requirement for tribal match on these grants for certain recipients.
- 10Cost-sharing exemption extended to IIJA grants
- 11- Adds a new category to exempt from cost-sharing: a grant awarded to an Indian Tribe under IIJA Section 40101(d).
- 12Clarifications on tribal ownership and eligibility
- 13- In multiple places, the bill enables Indian Tribes or tribally owned eligible entities to be considered as eligible recipients and to participate in generation and transmission projects, including distributed generation and transmission system-connected projects, with language tailored to tribal contexts.