Sponsors (5)
The bill directs $50M/year to help community health centers install clean energy and receive technical assistance—cutting their energy costs and emissions and enabling scaled deployments—while imposing modest federal cost, excluding some resilience upgrades, and risking unequal access for the smallest centers.
Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) nationwide can deploy solar and battery storage systems, lowering their energy bills and operating costs.
FQHCs receive funded technical assistance for system design, procurement, and operation, increasing project success rates and long-term savings.
The grants support clean energy deployment at health centers, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution around those facilities.
Federal taxpayers will fund $50 million per year for five years to run the grant program, increasing federal spending.
Limiting grants to qualifying solar, storage, and technical assistance projects may exclude other grid or facility resilience upgrades that could also benefit health centers.
Smaller or less-resourced FQHCs may struggle to apply for grants or meet matching/administrative requirements, concentrating benefits in better-resourced centers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a DOE grant program to fund solar and energy storage installations and technical assistance at FQHCs, authorizing $50M/year for FY2026–2030.
Creates a Department of Energy grant program to fund installation of solar panels and energy storage systems at Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and to provide related technical assistance. The DOE must establish the program within 180 days and the bill authorizes $50 million per year for fiscal years 2026–2030 to support eligible entities carrying out qualifying projects. The grant program is limited to specified eligible entities (state or local governments, FQHCs, nonprofit organizations with FQHC members, and provider consortia/networks majority owned or controlled by FQHCs). Grants may only be used for qualifying solar or energy storage projects and associated technical assistance; “energy storage technology” is defined by reference to the Internal Revenue Code.
Official title: To direct the Secretary of Energy to establish a grant program to facilitate the use of solar energy systems and energy storage technologies at Federally qualified health centers, and for other purposes.
Introduced November 21, 2025 by Adam Smith · Last progress November 21, 2025