BISMARCK — When federal solar funding was withdrawn earlier this year, Cody Two Bears had to inform dozens of tribal members that their jobs were no longer available.

“At full capacity, we were going to hire up to 60 people within our organization alone to disperse this project within five years,” said Two Bears, founder of Indigenized Energy on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. “I was up to about 30 employees. So, I was about halfway there within the first year of launching this program.”

Two Bears’ nonprofit had been preparing to manage a $135.6 million share of the now-canceled Solar For All program, which would have brought rooftop solar to thousands of low-income tribal homes across a five-state region.

When the program was scrapped, so were dozens of potential good-paying clean

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