Leaders of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) and SEEC Member U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell are celebrating the success of a court decision against the EPA.
Two months ago, the Trump Administration launched a broad, far-reaching attack on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a historic program established in the Inflation Reduction Act to expand access to low-cost, high-impact clean energy financing.
In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would terminate contracts with all eight awardees under the GGRF’s National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator. His action threatened $20 billion in critical clean energy and local economic development projects. For weeks, neither EPA nor Citibank had provided the nonprofit grantees with any explanation to justify the freeze.
On April 15, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan granted a preliminary injunction to GGRF awardees, unfreezing their federal funds and preventing the EPA from unlawfully terminating their awards. On Wednesday morning, the EPA appealed Chutkan’s injunction and will take the lawsuit to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Dingell, an original author of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, was joined by SEEC Co-Chairs Reps. Doris Matsui, Mike Quigley, and Paul Tonko and Vice Chairs Reps. Don Beyer of Virginia, Suzanne Bonamici, Sean Casten, Mike Levin and Chellie Pingree in responding to the news Wednesday. Last month, the members led a letter with a total of 82 members of Congress to Zeldin to demand that the EPA immediately release the frozen grants.
“After two unprecedented months of EPA’s attempts to claw back legally obligated dollars, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) awardees were finally granted their request by the courts to regain access to federal funds dedicated to lowering energy bills, creating jobs, cutting pollution, and helping build a strong American economy. For weeks, Trump’s EPA has waged an unjustified and unsubstantiated assault on GGRF, representing yet another example of the Trump Administration unnecessarily spurring economic uncertainty in our communities and driving American businesses to the brink of bankruptcy. Despite repeated demands by the federal judge that EPA show legal justification for the termination, the Trump Administration failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing,” they said Wednesday.
They called the EPA’s appeal “a campaign of intimidation. Despite not having any of the facts on its side, EPA clearly hopes that it can run these programs into the ground via delay and coercion. We reiterate our demand that EPA stop its shocking witch hunt and finally do the job it was mandated to do.”
The SEEC is a coalition of 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives that was founded in January 2009 to be a focused, active, and effective coalition for advancing policies that address climate change, promote clean energy innovation and domestic manufacturing, develop renewable energy resources, create family-sustaining clean jobs, protect our nation’s air, water, and natural environment, and promote environmental justice.
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Rebecca Barnabi
