EPA Seeking to Claw Back $20 Billion in Climate Law Grants

(Bloomberg) -- The Environmental Protection Agency will attempt to claw back some $20 billion in funding for climate projects awarded under President Joe Biden’s signature climate law, administrator Lee Zeldin said Wednesday evening, saying the effort was a “scheme” without proper oversight. 

“The financial agreement with the bank needs to be instantly terminated and the bank must immediately return all the” funds, Zeldin said in video post on X, referring to the lender that oversees the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. “EPA needs to re-assume responsibility for all of these funds.”

The fund, run by the EPA, received $27 billion in President Joe Biden’s signature climate law to help with the deployment of solar panels, heat pumps, and electric vehicles. The program distributed some $20 billion in funds last year to nonprofits, community development organizations, credit unions and housing agencies, and has earmarked an additional $7 billion for solar.

It’s been under scrutiny from Republicans after an EPA employee was caught on camera by the right-wing activist group Project Veritas comparing the funding to “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” discussing the need to distribute the funding “as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all,” and characterizing the effort as “an insurance policy against Trump winning.” 

While Zeldin conceded in his post that “there is zero reason to suspect any wrongdoing by the bank,” he said he planned to refer the matter to the EPA Office of Inspector General and would be consulting with the Department of Justice. 

The effort, which is almost certain to draw legal challenges, comes amid broader scrutiny of the billions of dollars of Inflation Reduction Act subsidies by the Trump administration, which ordered a halt to the spending on President Donald Trump’s first day in office.

“The U.S. government’s failure to honor legal agreements already made makes America’s business environment unpredictable and ultimately bad for business, bad for workers, and bad faith in our economy,” Dream.org, an environmental justice nonprofit, said in a statement.

(Updates with statement from non-profit in last paragraph.)

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