A federal judge ordered the Trump Environmental Protection Agency to release $20 billion in climate grants that it has withheld, a major blow to the administration’s efforts to stop what it has called the improper awarding of money to nonprofit green groups.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction late Tuesday preventing the EPA from “unlawfully suspending or terminating” billions of dollars in climate money from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which the Trump administration has said distributed the funds without proper oversight.
The EPA quickly appealed the injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Chutkan’s order called on Citibank, which is holding the funds, to disburse expenses that the climate groups in question incurred before the funding freeze that started in February. Chutkan, whom former President Barack Obama appointed, did not specify how much of the funds would be released, but climate groups expect more clarity from the judge on Wednesday.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has targeted the funds, claiming the Biden administration improperly distributed them by routing them through Citibank. The EPA has frozen the funds for eight weeks and sought to cancel $20 billion in grants for eight nonprofit organizations through the program.
The EPA’s efforts to cancel the grant money were quickly met with litigation from three climate groups: Climate United, Coalition for Green Capital, and Power Forward Communities.
“Today’s decision gives us a chance to breathe after the EPA unlawfully, and without due process, terminated our awards and blocked access to funds that were appropriated by Congress and legally obligated,” Climate United CEO Beth Bafford said in a statement.
“After a year-long application process, we were hired to do a job that we’ve done for decades: investing in communities and strengthening markets. We want to get back to work,” she added.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Democrats and signed by former President Joe Biden, established the fund and provides hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy subsidies.
Zeldin has called the funds “gold bars,” referencing a video filmed last year in which a former EPA employee said the Biden administration was attempting to disburse funds as quickly as possible before the end of the term.
“It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic, and we’re throwing like gold bars off the edge,” the former employee says in the video.
RUNDOWN: THE GREEN GROUPS THAT GOT THE $20 BILLION IN ‘GOLD BARS’ FROM THE EPA
The fund was given $27 billion to help fund climate projects across the United States, specifically in low-income communities. The three nonprofit groups suing the EPA were granted $14 billion under the program’s National Clean Investment Fund.
In a statement, Climate United said that the groups could now continue their work to fund climate projects. For instance, Climate United is financing a $31.8 million project in Arkansas to build 18 solar project sites aiming to deliver 66 megawatts of energy to the University of Arkansas.
