Governor Andy Beshear joined the U.S. Department of Energy to announce the approval of a federal grant for a hydropower facility this week. Gov. Beshear said a federal grant up to $81 million was approved to help construct a first-of-its-kind $1.3 billion coal-to-pumped storage hydropower facility in Bell County. Gov. Beshear said the project will create approximately 1,500 high-quality construction jobs along with 30 operations jobs and enough energy to power nearly 67,000 homes each year. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Demonstration Program and Former Mine Land Grant, funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, was approved for Rye Development to transition the former coal mine site, located near the Cumberland River, to a pumped-storage hydroelectric facility. Rye Development CEO Paul Jacob said they are proud of all of the hard work it took to get to this point.
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