US EPA head wants to recall US$20 billion in clean tech grants

Lee Zeldin, the newly appointed head of the EPA, said the bank holding the roughly US$20 billion in grants—which is reported to be Citibank – “must immediately return” the money and that “EPA needs to reassume responsibility for all of these funds.”

In a statement last week (13^th February), Zeldin said: “One of my very top priorities at EPA is to be an excellent steward of your hard-earned tax dollars. There will be zero tolerance of any waste and abuse. The days of irresponsibly shovelling boatloads of cash to far-left, activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over.”

The funds in question were likely awarded to non-profits and climate-based financing institutions under the US$14 billion National Clean Investment Fund and the US$6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator. The recipients then distribute those funds to increase clean energy deployments, often among disadvantaged communities.

They include US Treasury-certified Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI) and national non-profits. The recipients are visible on the EPA website.

Zeldin alleged that the recipients could distribute government money “with far less transparency” than the EPA itself would. He said there is “zero reason to expect any wrongdoing by the bank” (Citibank).

The call for the funds to be returned follows a video recorded in December which showed a then-EPA employee saying that the agency was “tossing gold bars off the Titanic” as it distributed its funding ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. The secretly-recorded video was distributed by the far-right activist group Project Veritas, which has been accused of producing content to deliberately discredit organisations it disagrees with.

Other government departments saw an uptick in loan activity ahead of the presidential inauguration in January. Our colleagues at Energy-storage.news reported on the increase in grant activity made by the Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) for energy storage projects in December (premium access).

Solar For All

The GGRF also includes a US$7 billion Solar For All programme, which supports the development of residential and distributed solar projects for low-income households.

Contracts under the programme were frozen last month, though they were not included in the US$20 billion which Zeldin wants recalled. The Solar For All scheme distributes funds directly to state energy authorities to increase the accessibility of solar projects to marginalised or less-well-served communities.

Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, an environmental campaign group, said in a statement: “Donald Trump has a long history of violating his contractual obligations going back to his earliest days as a developer. Then, like now, it’s hard-working people and small businesses most often left holding the bag. The Solar For All funds the EPA is now withholding are specifically designed to bring down energy costs for low-income and disadvantaged communities. 

“We call on newly installed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to reverse the Solar for All freeze and deliver on each and every one of its promised grants and contracts, as authorised by law, to the communities that need them most.”

PV Tech has previously covered the impact that the Trump administration could have on solar funding models in the US, from the Domestic Content adder to the shape and implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as a whole following a 90-day pause on IRA funding dispersal enacted in one of Trump’s inauguration day executive orders.