Land Funding Tracker
Funding Programs
The following federal programs and tax credits include funding and technical assistance opportunities to reduce agriculture, land use, land use change, and forestry emissions; enhance land carbon sinks; and achieve permanent biomass-based carbon dioxide removal. While the program tracker below includes select federal funding incentives targeted at reaping climate benefits from land systems, project eligibility may include activities related to non-climate outcomes, such as water quality or biodiversity, that underpin our land resources and their ecosystems so that they can provide climate benefits.
Additional federal incentives may augment these funding resources, including tax credits, funding sources with broader applicability, such as the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program, and funding directly provided to federal agencies to improve greenhouse gas measurement and monitoring for agriculture, forestry, and land use.
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP)
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: NRCS
Funding Amount: $1.4 billion
Description: Helps landowners, land trusts, and other entities protect, restore, and enhance wetlands or protect working farms and ranches through conservation easements.
Eligible Applicants: Conservation entities, agriculture producers, farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners.
Assistance to Forest Landowners with <2,500 Acres of Forestland – Emerging Private Markets for Climate Mitigation and Forest Resilience
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: FS
Funding Amount: $100 million
Description: To support the participation of forest landowners who own less than 2,500 acres of forestland in emerging private markets for climate mitigation or forest resilience.
Eligible Applicants:
- Tracks A & B: U.S. State Governments; U.S. Local Governments; Tribal Governments; Alaska Native Corporations/Villages; Other Tribal Entities; Education Institutions; Non-Profit Entities; and For-Profit Entities.
- Track C: Nonprofit organizations with a mission focused on sustainable forestry and/or forest conservation. Applicants must have demonstrated success in managing competitive subgrant programs that are regional or national in scope.
Assistance to Underserved Forest Landowners – Climate Mitigation and Forest Resilience Practices
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: FS
Funding Amount: $150 million
Description: To assist underserved forest landowners in carrying out climate mitigation or forest resilience practices.
Eligible Applicants: Non-federal forests
Biofuel Infrastructure and Agriculture Product Market Expansion (Higher Blend Infrastructure Incentive Program)
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: RBCS
Funding Amount: $500 million
Description: To provide grants through the Higher Blend Infrastructure Incentive Program, which has the goal of significantly increasing the sales and use of higher blends of ethanol and biodiesel by expanding the infrastructure for renewable fuels derived from U.S. agricultural products and by sharing the costs related to building out biofuel-related infrastructure.
Eligible Applicants: Transportation fueling facilities including fueling stations, convenience stores, hypermarket fueling stations, fleet facilities (including rail and marine), and similar entities with capital investments; fuel distribution facilities, such as terminal operations, depots, and midstream partners, and similarly equivalent operations.
Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: NRCS
Funding Amount: $8.45 billion
Description: Provides technical and financial assistance to producers to address natural resource concerns and deliver environmental benefits such as improved water and air quality, conserved ground and surface water, increased soil health and reduced soil erosion and sedimentation, improved or new wildlife habitat, and mitigation against drought and increasing weather volatility.
Eligible Applicants: Agriculture producers (including nonindustrial private forest landowners and Indian Tribes), farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners.
Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize
Authorization: IIJA
Agency: DOE
Office: FECM/NREL
Funding Amount: $35 million
Description: The Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize (CDR Purchase Pilot Prize) offers up to $35 million in cash awards to teams that provide impactful CDR concept proposals, develop and refine these plans, and ultimately deliver their specified CDR credits. The prize is open to four CDR technology pathways:
- Direct Air Capture
- Biomass (BiCRS) technologies
- Enhanced geological weathering and enhanced mineralization technologies
- Planned and managed carbon sinks
Eligible Applicants:Eligible competitors must offer CDR that is removed and sequestered within the U.S., including Tribal Nations, and U.S. Territories, or associated federal or state waters.
Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: NRCS
Funding Amount: $3.25 billion
Description: Provides technical and financial assistance to compensate agricultural and forest producers who agree to increase their level of conservation by adopting additional conservation activities and maintaining their baseline level of conservation.
Eligible Applicants: Agriculture producers, farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners.
Conservation Technical Assistance
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: NRCS
Funding Amount: $1 billion
Description: Provides conservation technical assistance that provides farmers, ranchers, and forestland owners the knowledge and tools they need to conserve, maintain, and restore the natural resources on their lands and improve the health of their operations for the future.
Eligible Applicants: Individuals, groups, and communities that make natural resource management decisions on private, Tribal, and other non-federal lands (e.g. conservation entities, agriculture producers, farmers, ranchers and forest landowners).
Hazardous Fuels Transportation Assistance Program
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: FS
Funding Amount: $25 million
Description: To support projects that remove hazardous fuels from national forests and grasslands to a location where the materials may be used for various wood products and services. This program contributes to the Wildfire Crisis Strategy implementation by removing hazardous fuels from forests and supports local forest product facilities and rural economies.
Eligible Applicants:
-
For-profit entities
-
Nonprofit entities
-
U.S. state governments
-
U.S. local governments
-
Tribal entities
-
Education institutions
Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities
Authorization: Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act
Agency: USDA
Office: Commodity Credit Corporation
Funding Amount: $3.1 billion
Description: To provide grants for pilot projects that create market opportunities for U.S. agricultural and forest products produced using climate-smart practices and include innovative, cost-effective methods for quantification, monitoring and verification of greenhouse gas and carbon sequestration benefits. USDA will support the production and marketing of climate-smart commodities through a set of pilot projects that provide voluntary incentives through partners to producers and landowners, including early adopters, to:
- Implement climate-smart production practices, activities, and systems on working lands,
- Measure/quantify, monitor and verify the carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits associated with those practices, and
- Develop markets and promote the resulting climate-smart commodities.
Eligible Applicants:
- County, city or township governments
- Special district governments
- State governments
- Small businesses
- For-profit organizations other than small businesses
- Federally recognized Native American Tribal governments
- Native American Tribal organizations other than Federally recognized Tribal governments
- Nonprofits that have a 501(c)(3)
- Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3)
- Private institutions of higher education
- Public and State-controlled institutions of higher education
Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP)
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: NRCS
Funding Amount: $4.95 billion
Description: Partner-driven approach to conservation that funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural land by leveraging collective resources and collaborating to implement natural resource conservation activities.
Eligible Applicants: Native American Organizations, Farmer/Rancher/Agriculture Producer, Land/Property Owner, State/Local Sponsored Organization, Federally Recognized Indian Tribal Governments. Producers in an approved partner project area who have priority resource concerns related to soil, water, and related natural resources, or who need assistance with complying with federal and state environment laws. A participant may be an owner, landlord, operator, or tenant of eligible agricultural lands or non-industrial forestlands. Limited resource producers, small- scale producers, social disadvantaged individuals, federally recognized Indian Tribal governments, Alaska natives, and Pacific Islanders are encouraged to apply.
Rural Energy for America Program (REAP)
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: RD
Funding Amount: $2.025 billion
Description: Guaranteed loan financing and grant funding to agricultural producers and rural small businesses for renewable energy systems or to make energy efficiency improvements. Agricultural producers can also apply for new energy-efficient equipment and new system loans for agricultural production and processing.
Eligible Applicants: Agricultural producers with at least 50 percent of their gross income coming from agricultural operations. Small businesses in eligible rural areas.
Tax credit: 40B Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Authorization: IRA
Agency: Treasury
Office: FECM/NREL
Type: Production
Description: Credit for the sale or use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which achieves a lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions reduction of at least 50% as compared with petroleum-based jet fuel Producers and blenders of SAF-kerosene fuel mixtures for aviation.
Wood Innovations Grant Program
Authorization: IRA
Agency: USDA
Office: FS
Funding Amount: $100 million
Description: To provide grants under the wood innovation grant program in section 8643 of the 2018 Farm bill, including for the construction of new facilities that advance the purposes of the program and for the cost of transporting of biomass from hazardous fuels reduction projects to facilities for processing.
Eligible Applicants: Existing forest product businesses
