Unleashing American Energy and Economic Prosperity; Rural Energy for America Program (REAP)

What it does

The Rural Business-Cooperative Service (RBCS or the Agency), an agency of the Rural Development (RD) mission area within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is issuing a final rule with comment period. Implementation of this action will simplify and streamline requirements and processes in the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). Under the new REAP structure, projects must already be fully built and operational before the applicant ever applies. Applicants then apply, submitting actual energy production or savings data for the prior 12 months, alongside 12 months of pre-installation data. The Agency evaluates applications for completeness, eligibility, risk, and merit and will award grants subject to the availability of funds and criteria provided in an annual notice. This new approach changes the program to a post completion, performance validated model. All RES and EEI awards will now be based on actual documented output, energy savings, costs, and system performance. Bottlenecks leading to application processing backlogs such as the technical merit review clearance process have been removed from the Agency's purview. Multilocation projects and specific application of certain technologies are now ineligible, and the program proposes to eliminate state level competitions in favor of a single national scoring and selection process. The result is a streamlined but significantly different process intended to reduce risk to the program, simplify administration, and prioritize projects delivering verifiable results. The result of these changes, combined with the release of a planned online application portal, will significantly decrease burden for applicants by shortening application length and review times across the program.

The Rural Business-Cooperative Service's summary, as published in the Federal Register.

What changed in the regulation

1 part of Title 7 of the Code of Federal Regulations:

7 CFR 4280

Wording on eCFR: the day before it took effect and from the day it took effect (first part listed).

Compared with

The Rural Business-Cooperative Service has published 2 final rules in 2026 so far, compared with 1 in all of 2025.

Counted by the Tribune from Federal Register records since Jan. 1, 2025.

Before this

No earlier Federal Register document under regulation identifier 0570-AB13 since Jan. 1, 2025.

What happens next and when

Effective date: This final rule is effective October 16, 2026.

The agency's dates, word for word.

Check it yourself

• The document in the Federal Register
• Docket RBS-26-BUSINESS-0529 on Regulations.gov
• Title 7 on eCFR

The record as published

Source: the Federal Register (public domain). The document in the Federal Register