What Is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act?

In November 2021, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R.3684) with bipartisan support. This infrastructure deal is a historic piece of legislation slated to rebuild critical components of the United States’ transportation and energy networks. The Act assists local governments in combating inflation costs, the climate crisis, and environmental injustices.

The Act also provides billions in aid to the energy industry with software and technology-based upgrades and enhancements to the energy infrastructure, including energy grid resiliency and outage management.

MCG Energy Solutions has a suite of energy software solutions to help power utilities fulfill the mandates of H.R.3684, and the increasing energy demands of consumers.

What’s In the IIJA?

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as H.R.3684 or IIJA) provides approximately $550 billion in new federal investment in America’s roads and bridges, water infrastructure, energy grid resilience, internet, and more. The funding comes from a variety of sources, including unspent COVID-19 relief funds, unused federal unemployment insurance aid, new superfund fees, and strengthening tax enforcement for cryptocurrencies.

This is a quick breakdown of H.R.3684 of the Act’s major investment areas:

• $120 billion for transportation
• $110 billion for roads, bridges and major projects
• $105 billion for water infrastructure projects
• $65 billion to bring high-speed internet to every American
• $65 billion for upgrades to power infrastructure, research and development of transmission and electricity distribution technologies, and smart grid technologies

MCG Energy’s products and services will aid utilities and other energy producers and distributors to effectively improve their operations in meeting the Act’s mandates.

Contact MCG Energy for information on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Why Infrastructure Investment is Needed

The architects of H.R.3684 understood the fundamental necessity to improve America’s physical and technological infrastructures. As consumer energy demands increase, power and energy infrastructure is becoming more intertwined with national economic stability.

This infrastructure consists of a broad network of solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, bioelectric, geothermal, and fossil fuel-based power production sources. Current energy transport methods need upgrades to keep up with technological advances, including Distributed Energy Resources (DERs).

The MCG Energy Software Suite assists in meeting these challenges with easy-to-use applications for scheduling maintenance, tracking assets and system health, and enabling workers and techs to proactively perform maintenance and repairs.

Energy Infrastructure and the U.S. Economy

In a recent evaluation by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), their report card brought to light the burdens currently faced by the United States’ aging energy infrastructure. The resiliency and reliability of the energy infrastructure are identified as the number one problem with the system costing consumers each time an outage occurs. Nearly all other infrastructures depend on the health of the energy infrastructure. Outages negatively affect our economy and cost the U.S. up to $169 billion annually. These outages seriously impact the digital economy, essentially stopping all lines of commerce and communication.

With the health of the economy in mind, the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act had overwhelming support from all sides of the political spectrum. Funding earmarked for the improvement and expansion of our nation’s power and energy infrastructure will be administered through the Department of Energy (DOE).

Partner with MCG Energy

As a government-approved vendor of energy software and services, you can work with MCG Energy confidently to improve energy security and efficiency, and forward green energy initiatives while meeting the requirements of the Act.

• We are the fastest-growing leader in the energy software industry, with a full range of solutions for energy asset management, outage management and logging, energy and credit risk, energy accounting, billing, and decision support.
• MCG Energy’s hardware and systems are maintained and audited annually for compliance with NIST 800-53 requirements. Each year we share our latest third-party audit reports with our customers as soon as they’re available.
• MCG Energy has 26 years’ experience in the energy software space, with offices in Minneapolis, Houston, and the greater Philadelphia and Portland areas. We are always ready to work with you to ensure our integrated, off-the-shelf software meets the constantly evolving requirements of your business.
• Our software is integrated with all North American ISO and RTO markets.
• Standard products and services include MCG Energy’s Software Assurance guarantee for coverage against changes to core industry systems.

Contact MCG Energy today and find out how we can assist you with the opportunities and challenges of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act!