USDA Announces Federal Loans for Two Iowa Rural Electric Cooperatives

Butler County Rural Electric Cooperative was identified by Storm Lake Radio as one of two Iowa rural electric cooperatives that received federal loans, the outlet reported on Feb. 25, 2026; the Storm Lake Radio excerpt supplied to this newsroom named the Butler County co-op and referred to “a Southwest Iowa electric cooperative” without giving that co-op’s name or the loan amounts in the supplied text.

The Des Moines Register’s social post covering the same topic headlined “The US Department of Agriculture announces $19 million in loans to Iowa electric co-ops for grid improvements,” and included a shortened link and the Facebook engagement shown as 7 reactions, 8 comments and 1 share. Comment excerpts captured in the post recorded local readers asking “Loans?” and debating USDA lending roles, with Teresa Baustian and Dorrance Brezina among those commenting in the captured thread.

Federal context for cooperative lending comes from multiple USDA and industry announcements supplied to this newsroom. USDA materials state that “Including today’s announcements, USDA has announced over $8.3 billion in funding as part of the New ERA program” and that the department “expects this over $8.3 billion to result in over $13 billion in New ERA financed grants and loans.” USDA also reported it is “awarding nearly $2.5 billion in financing for Tri‑State Generation and Transmission Association and has selected six rural electric cooperatives to move forward in the awards process for nearly $1 billion in New ERA funds.”

Those six cooperatives named in the USDA excerpts are Connexus Energy (serving Minnesota and South Dakota), Central Electric Power Cooperative Inc. (South Carolina), Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association Inc. (Colorado), Nebraska Electric Generation (Nebraska), Rayburn Country Electric Cooperative (Texas) and Yampa Valley Electric Association (Colorado). Earlier New ERA-related coverage from Oct. 1, 2024 noted larger, separate awards: Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy received a combined $1.3 billion to fund power purchase agreements tied to the proposed restart of the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, and USDA announced a $15.6 million PACE loan for Dairyland Power Cooperative on Sept. 25 to finance two 2-megawatt solar-plus-storage projects in western Wisconsin capable of powering up to 1,000 homes.

The supplied Storm Lake Radio excerpt did not specify whether the Butler County award or the unnamed Southwest Iowa cooperative’s award is part of USDA’s New ERA program, the PACE program, or a different federal lending vehicle. The Des Moines Register post cited a $19 million statewide total but did not list awardees or program names in the captured material provided here, so it is not possible from the supplied excerpts to reconcile which Iowa co-ops received which sums or under which USDA program the funds were made.

Until Butler County Rural Electric Cooperative, the unidentified Southwest Iowa cooperative, or USDA publish full award details, the size, program source and intended grid improvements for the loans reported Feb. 25, 2026 remain unconfirmed in the material supplied to this newsroom. USDA materials note broader goals for its cooperative funding including lower energy costs and enhanced grid resiliency, and the department estimates that one in five rural Americans will benefit from its clean energy investments.