Climate action projects across the nation, including in California, will get $600 million more in federal funding, President Joe Biden announced during a tour of a nature preserve in northern California on June 19.
California’s share—$67 million—will help build power lines and other transmission infrastructure, and support the state’s transition to 100 percent clean energy, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
“We’re taking the most aggressive climate action ever,” Biden said. “I’m here today to announce that we’re putting our critical climate investment to work.”
The U.S. Department of Energy also is expected to announce a $2 billion investment to modernize the nation’s electric grid.
“That funding can help ensure our electric grid is stronger, that the lights and air conditioning and internet stay on during heat waves and storms, and other climate events,” Biden added.
The president arrived in the state on June 19 at Moffett Federal Airfield in Santa Clara County, where he was greeted by Newsom, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Santa Clara County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, and other regional officials.
“These wetlands act as a critical buffer between the rising tides and communities at risk—protecting homes, property, and infrastructure against flooding,” Biden said, appearing out of breath as he began his speech after the walking tour.
California is continuing to recover from severe flooding and winter storms that ravaged coastal regions and dumped historic amounts of snow in the mountains earlier this year. Thousands of residents, many of whom were illegal immigrant workers, were flooded from their homes as the Pajaro River levee near the coast in the central part of the state flooded in March.
“Building on our incredible efforts locally, my administration is doing all we can to help recover and build so we can be prepared ... and adapt,” Biden said on June 19.
Biden’s administration said the funding would support building natural infrastructure, planning, and preparing for community-led relocation for those who lost homes.
It would also pay for projects to protect public access to coastal natural resources that protect communities and ecosystems from sea-level rise, flooding, hurricanes, storm surges, and other climate impacts, the office reported.
The federal allocation is part of the $369 billion set aside by the Inflation Reduction Act, signed in August 2022. The law is hailed as the largest climate investment in the nation’s history.
So far, it has paid for $50 billion in projects that prepare for the impacts of hazardous events, another $9 billion to elevate roads and bridges to protect them from flooding, and $13 billion to improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk. In addition, the bill has funded $15.4 billion on drought mitigation projects in the western U.S., and billions in other projects for coastal restoration and infrastructure, according to Biden.
“There’s simply no president in modern American history that’s done more to deliver on the promise of addressing head-on the issue of climate change than President Joe Biden,” Newsom said Monday. “California, of course, is one of many states that’s a beneficiary of those investments. This state prides itself on being on the leading and cutting edge of this transition and we’re proving we can do it and grow our economy.”
The new federal funding will support the state’s ongoing climate initiatives to protect coastal communities from rising oceans and build clean energy, Newsom said in a release.
After his stop in Palo Alto, one of the nation’s wealthiest cities, Biden was expected to attend two reelection campaign fundraisers in the region.
