This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

At the start of the year, Jon and Brittany Klimstra were nearly ready to install a solar array on their Polk County farm.

They’d done extensive site assessments and paid engineering consultants, expecting to be reimbursed under a federal USDA grant they were awarded in 2024.

As two former scientists who had moved back to Western North Carolina 10 years ago to grow apples and be close to their families, getting solar on their farmfelt like a chance to both save money and live their values.

“We’ve certainly been interested in wanting to do something like this, whether it be for our personal home or for our farm buildings for a while,” said Jon Klimstra, who operates TK Family Farm just outside of Rutherfordton, with his wife Brittany. “It just was cost prohibitive up to this point without some type of funding or grant help.”

They were awarded $12,590 for a solar installation from the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). But, after President Donald Trump’s administration froze large amounts of federal climate-related funding, the money never came.

“We were several site visits in, several engineering conversations. We’ve had electricians, the solar company,” said Brittany Klimstra. “It’s been a very involved process.”

“We were getting ready to start it actually late winter, early spring,” Jon Klimstra added. “Now that program has been put on hold and frozen. We’re not sure if and when that will be unfrozen.”

Since the grant is reimbursement-based, the Klimstras are already out-of-pocket for some costs related to the project. Plus, the farm had been banking on saving over $1,000 per year in utilities expenses. In a given month, their electricity bill is $300-$400.

REAP was going to be a lifesaver for family-owned, rural businesses like theirs, the Klimstras said, by reducing utility bills and helping with the capital costs of installing energy-saving technology and renewable energy on their buildings.

provided by Jon Klimstra

A program to help struggling rural businesses

REAP was launched as a part of the 2008 Farm Bill and got a boost from the Biden administration as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, one of the administration’s signature spending bills, which in 2022 authorized nearly $800 billion in energy and climate spending. The bill included tax incentives, grants, and loans for projects related to electric vehicles, rural electrification, and utility-scale renewables. Programs funded by the IRA are currently under particular scrutiny from the new administration, with environmental justice and climate programs under the EPA and USDA facing spending freezes.

Like many other renewable energy programs throughout the country, everything in REAP that had not yet been disbursed is frozen. The Trump administration has indicated that the freeze will be reassessed within 90 days, but REAP recipients who spoke with BPR report having received little communication from the USDA on what might happen then.

“USDA has a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” USDA representatives told BPR in an email. “As part of this effort, Secretary Rollins is carefully reviewing this funding and will provide updates as soon as they are made available.”

North Carolina was among the top REAP states overall, receiving nearly $40 million in grant funding for 676 projects. Within a 70-mile radius of Asheville, millions of dollars in announced REAP funds are still not disbursed. Projects awarded promised to balance the energy costs of small businesses and generate power for the surrounding grid. For instance, funding for a solar array was awarded to the Cherokee Boys Club, and was set to save $15,328 per year, generate 178,368 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year, and save enough electricity to power 16 homes. Other businesses in the region awarded grants included dairy farms, vineyards, and roofing companies.

Throughout the Appalachian region, over 1,700 REAP projects have been funded over the past 10 years.

Any funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, and which was not already in the hands of recipients, is on hold.

Energy costs are high in Appalachia

Across the Appalachian region, historically high energy costs have made the difference between survival and failure for many local businesses, said Heather Ransom, who works with Solar Holler, a solar company that serves parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.

“We have seen incredible rate increases across the region in electricity over the past 10, even 20 years,” she said.

Through Solar Holler, REAP grants also passed into the hands of rural library systems and schools. Through REAP, the company installed 10,000 solar panels throughout the Wayne County, West Virginia school system. Solar Holler has $6 million worth of projects on hold currently, which it applied to on behalf of regional organizations and businesses.

Solar Holler works in coal-producing parts of the region, where climate change discussions have been fraught with the realities of declining jobs and revenue from the coal industry. Even in the coalfields, the program helped make the case for communities to veer away from coal and gas-fired energy that contributes to climate change.

“What REAP has helped us do is show people that it’s not just a decision that’s driven by environmental motives or whatever, it actually makes good business sense to go solar,” Ransom said.

provided by Heather Ransom, Solar Holler

Utility costs for customers of regional utilities like Duke, Kentucky Power, and the Tennessee Valley Authority have all climbed, especially due to worsening summer heat and more frequent winter cold snaps. An analysis late last year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that people living in the Southeast are considered some of the highest energy burdened – meaning, the percentage of a household’s income spent on electricity, heating, and cooling costs. As a region, the Southeast is both heavily low-income and dependent on coal and natural gas.

Even in largely conservative, rural communities like his, Klimstra said, the overlapping pauses in federal funding are beginning to make small farmers and rural business owners uncomfortable.

“Certainly people are grumbling,” he said of farmers. Meanwhile, the increased frequency of disasters is making things more challenging, causing repeated stress on crops like Klimstra’s orchard.

“We don’t want Walmart, we don’t want big box stores,” Brittany Klimstra added. “We want to keep the farmland and our agricultural integrity and our agricultural history intact.” But, if the costs of energy and crop stress continue, she said, TK Family Farms will have no choice but to reduce or cease operations altogether.

Losing REAP funding and the potential funding reductions to other programs like SNAP, Klimstra said, will have ripple effects – from loss of local jobs to reduced access to fresh produce. TK Family Farms sells to the local farmer’s market and schools, and hires locally as well, with one part-time year-round worker and three to five seasonal workers.

“I always kind of think of these projects as a spiderweb and that there’s all these fingers that are going out from the central location and supporting other businesses, other groups, other people,” Klimstra said. “We can only do so much at a time and so this was one of those projects that I felt like going to to help us kind of extend those fingers out into the community.”