Oct. 29 (UPI) — The Biden administration announced the distribution of $3 billion in grants to 55 applicants to address environmental issues at ports, including infrastructure improvements and reducing diesel air pollution.
The administration said the funds, made available through the Inflation Reduction Act, will be distributed through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Ports program. The 55 approved applications were from 27 states.
“Our nation’s ports are critical to creating opportunity here in America, offering good-paying jobs, moving goods, and powering our economy,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “Today’s historic $3 billion investment builds on President Biden’s vision of growing our economy while ensuring America leads in globally competitive solutions of the future.”
The EPA said the approved applications came from entities applying to the Zero-Emission Technology Deployment Competition and the Climate and Air Quality Planning Competition. It said the projects totaling $8 billion requested funding under the two programs.
“Decarbonizing our nation’s ports is one of the many ways President Biden and Vice President Harris’s investment agenda is helping cut pollution and create good-paying union jobs,” White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said.
“The communities being uplifted by these grants provide proof points for home good environmental policy can be good economic policy.”
The various projects covered by the grant will go to purchase zero-emission equipment to replace human-operated and human-maintained equipment currently used at ports, including cargo handling equipment, some 1,000 drayage trucks, 10 locomotives, and 20 vessels.
It will also go to upgrade shore power systems, battery-electric and hydrogen vehicle charging and fueling infrastructure and solar power generation.
The EPA said the scope of the projects will help protect human health and grow the economy with good-paying jobs while making the United States a global leader in clean technology.
