Energy Bills Relief Act

Key Points

• The bill dramatically expands the Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP), raising emergency funding to $2 billion per year and creating a new $1 billion annual grant program for energy affordability and resilience. It raises the income eligibility threshold to 250% of the poverty level or 80% of state median income, whichever is greater, and sets a goal of keeping eligible household energy costs below 3% of income.
• To speed up connecting new clean energy projects to the grid, the bill orders FERC to complete a rulemaking within 12 months to fix interconnection backlogs. It also creates a new tax credit of up to 30% (with prevailing wage and apprenticeship bonuses) for building large interstate transmission lines, and authorizes $2.1 billion for domestic transformer manufacturing.
• The bill protects everyday families from paying for grid upgrades that benefit large energy users like data centers. It creates a new 'large load facility' class for customers with peak demand over 75 megawatts and requires utilities to recover all upgrade costs from that class, not from regular ratepayers.
• The legislation repeals rollbacks of clean energy tax credits enacted in a prior law, reinstates terminated federal grants for clean energy, and requires parity in permitting so that wind, solar, and storage projects are not treated more harshly than oil, gas, or coal projects.
• New requirements for natural gas exports would require the Secretary of Energy to find that proposed exports will not significantly contribute to climate change, raise domestic energy prices, or create disproportionate environmental burdens on vulnerable communities before granting approval.
• The bill updates the national goal for renewable energy on federal lands from 25 gigawatts to 60 gigawatts by 2035, streamlines permitting for solar, wind, and geothermal projects on public lands, and creates a new Renewable Energy Resource Conservation Fund to protect wildlife and habitats in regions with renewable projects.