EPA boasts of clean energy advances as reversal threat looms

In the final week before Donald Trump takes office, federal regulators announced today that the Biden administration has awarded nearly $69 billion through two historic pieces of legislation designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy costs, support the clean energy transition and help communities address pollution.

“In just three years, [the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)] has funded thousands of incredibly popular projects in every part of the country, from electrifying school buses in rural Texas to replacing lead pipes in Pittsburgh,” Zealan Hoover, senior advisor to the EPA administrator, said on a press call Friday.

As of Jan. 6, the EPA had awarded 93% of grant funding made available by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to the new report. Biden signed the IRA in August 2022, with the administration calling it “the largest investment in clean energy and climate action ever.” The agency has awarded 82% of funding through the so-called Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which passed in November 2021.

The report comes amid concerns that a Republican budget reconciliation bill could seek to reverse the IRA. A list of “spending reform options” reportedly distributed among House Republicans includes reversing $468 billion in Biden climate policies, which would entail repealing, among other measures, IRA green energy grants.

But while it may be easier to repeal the IRA under a Republican-controlled federal government, Republican lawmakers may hesitate to get rid of funding that benefits their constituents, according to the Brookings Institute, an independent, non-partisan think tank.

Almost 60% of announced IRA projects are in Republican congressional districts, according to a two-year review of the IRA released in August. That month, 18 Republican House Representatives signed a letter calling for attempts to repeal the IRA to leave the legislation’s energy tax credits in place.

“Clawing back the EPA funds would only harm the millions of Americans finally benefitting from long overdue investment in their communities,” said Zealan on the press call, adding that only about 30 of the 38,000 grants awarded during both Biden’s term and Trump’s first term were terminated, and that most terminations were “mutually agreed upon.”

“I want to emphasize that obligated award agreements are definite commitments that create a legal obligation for the government and the recipient of the award,” said Zealan. “While there are some nuances across the terms and conditions for each program, all the major climate grants EPA has awarded can only be legally terminated for a failure to comply with the terms and conditions of their award agreement.”

Grants through the IRA and BIL have been used to fund 8,700 clean school buses, finance the replacement of over 40,000 lead drinking water lines, and help clean up 185 heavily contaminated “Superfund” sites, among other projects, according to the report.

The funding has enabled communities across the country to pursue specific projects designed to meet their needs, including $1.5 million for a utility company in Dalton, Georgia to test technologies for removing and destroying harmful PFAS chemicals and $20 million for a utility company in Lansing, Michigan to make safety updates to its drinking water system.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio, together with the city of Cleveland and an adjacent county, received Climate Pollution Reduction Grant funding to replace a coal-fired peaker power plant with solar energy, outfit school rooftops with solar panels and plant trees.

“In my estimation…[the Biden-Harris administration] has done 20 years of work in a four-year period,” said Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne on the press call.

(Featured image by Alexander Mills for Unsplash+.)