This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist, BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina,WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station, WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region, and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

The Trump administration’s freeze on funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law from the Biden era, has left farmers and rural businesses in Illinois and across the country on the hook for costly energy efficiency upgrades and renewable energy projects.

The grants are part of the Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, originally created in the 2008 farm bill and supercharged by funding from the IRA. It provides farmers and other businesses in rural areas with relatively small grants and loans to help lower their energy bills by investing in things like more energy-efficient farming equipment or installing small solar panels.

By November 2024, the IRA had awarded more than $1 billion for nearly 7,000 REAP projects, which help rural businesses in low-income communities reduce the up-front costs of clean energy and save thousands on utility costs each year.

But now, that funding is in limbo. Under the current freeze, some farmers have already spent tens of thousands of dollars on projects and are waiting for the promised reimbursement. Others have had to delay work they were counting on to support their businesses, unsure when their funding will come through — or if it will.

REAP is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Secretary Brooke Rollins said the agency is “coming to the tail end of the review process” of evaluating grants awarded under the Biden administration.

“If our farmers and ranchers especially have already spent money under a commitment that was made, the goal is to make sure they are made whole,” Rollins told reporters at a press conference in Atlanta last week.

But it’s not clear when the funds might be released, or whether all the farmers and business owners awaiting their money will receive it.

Courtesy of Joshua Snedden

Illinois farmers still waiting for promised federal funds

For Joshua Snedden, a REAP grant was key to making his 10-acre farm in Monee more affordable and environmentally sustainable. But months after installing pricey solar panels, he’s still waiting on a reimbursement from the federal government — and the delay is threatening his bottom line.

“I’m holding out hope,” said Snedden, a first-generation farmer in the northeastern Illinois community. “I’m trying to do everything within my power to make sure the funding is released.”

In December, his five-year old operation, Fox at the Fork, began sourcing its power from a new 18 kilowatt solar array, a collection of multiple solar panels, that cost Snedden $86,364. The system currently offsets all the farm’s electricity use and then some.

REAP offers grants to pay for up to half of a project like this, and loan guarantees for up to 75% of the cost. When he bought the solar array, Snedden was counting on a $19,784 REAP reimbursement grant. But the reimbursement, critical to Snedden’s cash flow, was frozen by Trump as part of a broader review of the USDA’s Biden-era commitments.

Snedden grows the produce he takes to market — everything from tomatoes to garlic to potatoes — on about an acre of his farm. He also plans to transform the rest of his land into a perennial crop system, which would include fruit trees like pears, plums, and apples planted alongside native flowers and grasses to support wildlife.

A solar array was always part of his plans, “but seemed like a pie in the sky” kind of project, he said, adding that he thought it might take him a decade to afford such an investment.

The REAP program has been a lifeline for Illinois communities struggling with aging infrastructure and growing energy costs, according to Amanda Pankau with the Prairie Rivers Network, an organization advocating for environmental protection and climate change mitigation across Illinois.

“By lowering their electricity costs, rural small businesses and agricultural producers can put that money back into their business,” Pankau said.

That’s exactly what Snedden envisioned. The new solar array wouldn’t just make his farm more resilient to climate change, but also more financially viable “because we could shift expenses from paying for energy to paying for more impactful inputs for the farm,” he said.

He anticipates that by switching to solar, Fox at the Fork will save close to $3,200 a year on electric bills.

Snedden is just one of many farmers across the country in this same position.

At the start of the year, Jon and Brittany Klimstra were nearly ready to install a solar array on their Polk County, North Carolina farm after being awarded a REAP grant 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, it felt 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. “It just was cost prohibitive up to this point without some type of funding.”

That funding came when they were awarded $12,590 from REAP for the installation. But, after the Trump administration’s funding freeze, the money never came.

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

Courtesy of Jon Klimstra

A Michigan business wanted to use solar to power some of its electricity

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan draws over 1.5 million visitors every year. Jim Lively hopes some of those people will camp RVs at a nearby site he plans to open next to his family’s local food market. He wants to use solar panels to help power the campsite and offset electric bills for the market, where local farmers bring produce directly to the store.

Lively helped promote REAP during his time at an environmental nonprofit, where he’d worked for over two decades. So the program was on his mind when it came time to replace the market’s big, south-facing roof.

“We put on a metal roof, and worked with a contractor who was also familiar with the REAP program, and we said, ‘Let’s make sure we’re setting this up for solar,’” he said. “So it was kind of a no-brainer for us.”

They were told they had been approved for a REAP grant of $39,696 last summer — half of the project’s total cost — but didn’t feel the need to rush the solar installation. Then, at the end of January, Lively was notified that the funding had been paused.

The property runs on electricity, rather than natural gas, and Lively wants to keep it that way. But those electric bills have been expensive — about $2,000 a month last summer, he said. If they get the RV site up and running, he expects those bills to approach $3,000.

Selling local food means operating within tight margins. Lively said saving on energy would help, but they won’t be able to move ahead with the rooftop solar unless the REAP funding is guaranteed.

Continuing to power the property with electricity rather than fossil fuels is a kind of personal commitment for Lively. “Boy, solar is also the right thing to do,” he said. “And it’s going to be difficult to do that without that funding.”

Izzy Ross / Grist

The future of the REAP funds remains uncertain

The USDA did not directly answer Grist’s questions about the specific timeline for the release of REAP funds, the amount of money under review, or the future of the program. Instead, an emailed statement criticized the Biden administration’s “misuse of hundreds of billions” of IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL) funds “all at the expense of the American taxpayer.”

“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,” the USDA said in the statement. “As part of this effort, Secretary Rollins is carefully reviewing this funding and will provide updates as soon as they are made available.”

Two federal judges have already ordered the Trump administration to release the impounded IRA and BIL funds. Earthjustice, a national environmental law organization, filed a lawsuit last week challenging the freeze of USDA funds on behalf of farmers and nonprofits.

“The administration is causing harm that can’t be fixed, and fairness requires that the funds continue to flow,” said Jill Tauber, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice.

Rollins released the first tranche of funding Feb. 20 and announced the release of additional program funds earlier this month. That did not include the REAP funding.

The USDA announced Wednesday it would expedite funding for farmers under a different program in honor of National Agriculture Day, but as of March 20 had not made an announcement about REAP.

Editor’s note: This is an abridged version of this story.

Rahul Bali of WABE contributed reporting.

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco covers climate change and the environment for WBEZ and Grist. Follow him on X at @__juanpab.

Emily Jones covers climate change and the environment for WABE and Grist. Follow him on X at @ejreports.

Katie Myers covers climate change and the environment for Blue Ridge Public Radio and Grist. Follow him on X at @stopitkatie.

Izzy Ross covers climate change and the environment for Interloched Public Radio and Grist. Follow her on Bluesky at @izzyjross.bsky.social