The Trump administration asserted Monday that EPA’s largest green bank recipient should be stripped of its almost $7 billion award because its leadership has too many Democratic ties.
The Climate United Fund signed a contract with EPA last year for the largest grant under a climate law initiative aimed at expanding lending for clean energy projects. The Trump administration froze all $20 billion of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants last month, prompting lawsuits from some awardees. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin then terminated the grants last week.
In Monday’s court-mandated filing, EPA said the nonprofit had “conflicts of interest” because senior staff served in the Obama and Biden administrations. The agency included no concrete allegations of fraud.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who is overseeing the lawsuits, last week criticized EPA for failing to provide any evidence of wrongdoing and ordered the agency to provide more details on its decision to pull the money by Monday. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, questioned whether EPA could provide proof of fraud, abuse or anything that was “improperly or unlawfully done” with the grant program — other than it ran afoul of Zeldin.
