During an event in Lansing, MI today, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced the award of $500 million under the Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grant Program to fund the retooling of General Motors’s (GM) Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant. The Inflation Reduction Act-funded program is a first-of-its-kind effort to provide direct grants to recently closed or at-risk facilities and funds the retooling efforts needed to transform production lines that were building internal combustion engine vehicles and parts into production lines building electric vehicles (EVs) and parts.  

The GM Lansing grant is one of 11 announced today, representing a total of $1.7 billion in federal funding. GM will use the grant to convert its internal combustion engine vehicle assembly plant into an efficient EV plant. The Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant is represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and this investment is expected to retain more than 650 jobs at the facility and create an additional 50. GM and UAW will partner to train workers at the facility in the new skills needed to assemble EVs. 

In response to the award announcement, the BlueGreen Alliance released the following statement from Michigan Senior State Policy Manager Frank Houston, who attended this morning’s event: 

“This program is fundamentally about reinvesting in communities—like our community here in Lansing and others across Michigan—that built the vehicles we drive today and supporting them to build the vehicles of the future. Secretary Granholm knows Michigan and knows what this investment will mean to Lansing. The Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grant Program will shape an EV future powered by high-quality, union jobs that enrich the communities where they’re located. All climate policy should look like this.”

“We look forward to working with the administration to ensure that workers and their communities receive the greatest possible benefit from this historic funding.”