KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – A Kansas City solar project once billed as big enough to power a third of the city’s homes is now on indefinite hold, a casualty of federal funding cuts.
Mayor Quinton Lucas made the announcement on Friday, Aug. 28.
The proposed solar array, planned for land surrounding the Kansas City International Airport, has lost the funding that was supposed to build it, according to Mayor Lucas.
Lucas said nine separate federal funding programs backing the project have been canceled, leaving a gap in the budget the city cannot currently close.
“Leaders come and go, but the value of investment in cleaner and more sustainable energy will never go away in a world confronting higher energy prices, high utility costs, and extreme weather events and conditions here and everywhere,” Mayor Lucas concludes.
Lucas attributed the funding collapse to a shift in federal priorities.
Clean energy, he said, is no longer a focus for the current federal administration or the majority of Congress – a reversal from just a few years ago, when the opposite was true.
He did not name the nine programs Friday. KCTV5 has asked the Mayor’s Office for a full list and for a dollar estimate of the funding shortfall, and will update this story when the information is available.
The KCI solar array was first unveiled in August 2023, when Lucas introduced legislation to advance a roughly 3,000-acre solar array at the airport.
At the time, city officials said the project could eventually include more than 500 solar panels generating over 500 megawatts of electricity – enough to power up to 70,000 homes, or about one-third of all households in Kansas City.
The announcement came with symbolic timing.
Lucas unveiled the plan one day before the one-year anniversary of former President Joe Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act, which he called “the largest investment by the federal government in clean energy” in the nation’s history, and traveled to the White House to mark the occasion.
At the time, the panels were being supplied by a Lawrence, Kansas, company and installed by Staco Electric Construction.
Three years later, under a new administration, that federal enthusiasm for clean energy has reversed course in Washington – and so, for now, has Kansas City’s most ambitious solar project.
Despite the setback, Lucas said clean energy and revenue-generating development remain top priorities for Kansas City.
He described projects like the KCI array as long-term investments in the City’s ability to generate its own renewable power – an approach he said could help keep Kansas City affordable for future generations as energy costs rise nationally.
The Mayor said the City will continue looking for new funding opportunities for the KCI project and similar developments, and intends to restart work once federal priorities shift again.
He offered no timeline for when that might happen.
The KCI array is not the only solar project tied to Kansas City in recent years.
In September 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded the city $4.5 million in brownfield cleanup funding, part of which was earmarked for redeveloping the former Hardesty Federal Complex, a 22-acre former Army Quartermaster Depot in the city’s Historic Northeast that has sat vacant for four decades.
A private developer, Arnold Development Group, had proposed turning that site into 500 affordable apartments, retail space, a daycare center – and a solar energy farm.
The project was privately driven and separate from the city-led KCI array, and it is not affected by Friday’s announcement.
KCTV5 has reached out to the Kansas City Aviation Department and City for comment on how the pause affects existing contracts and airport operations, and will update this story with responses.
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