Biden administration grants $90 million to help buildings withstand climate disasters

When Hurricane Ida battered Louisiana, strong winds ripped the roofs off tens of thousands of homes. But today, the Biden administration is hoping a simple fix could save homes in that state — and others across the country — from a similar fate.

The funding, which stems from the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021, comes as the nation reels from a string of weather disasters fueled by climate change. In the Northeast, severe storms have dumped more than two months’ worth of rain on Vermont, causing catastrophic flooding, while in the southern United States, 54 million people are slated to see triple-digit temperatures this week amid a punishing heat dome.

The Energy Department will distribute the grants to 27 projects in 26 states and the District of Columbia. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced the funding on Wednesday during a visit to Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina in 2005 destroyed or damaged more than 800,000 homes and caused an estimated $125 billion in damage overall.

Katrina — and Ida after it — has spurred state officials to act. Last year, the Louisiana State Uniform Construction Code Council adopted some of the strongest building codes in the southeastern United States, according to environmental advocates. The Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance, a group that promotes energy efficiency in the region, will receive three grants totaling $4.7 million to help implement these codes.

“If the building codes are not appropriate, then the way people build — and what they build — actually produces a bad result when a bad thing happens,” Mitch Landrieu, President Biden’s infrastructure implementation adviser, said in an interview Tuesday at the White House.

“That can be water, it can be floods, it can be fire, it can be whatever,” said Landrieu, who served as mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018, helping to jump-start the city’s recovery from Katrina. “And this is the president’s attempt to basically say, ‘We’re not building back like we did before. We’re going to build back better.’”

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