Memo: Gutting the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund Will Raise Costs for America’s Working Families
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Clean Power Information Project
DATE: May 19, 2025
RE: Gutting the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund Will Raise Costs for America’s Working Families
The American people’s top priority is lower costs, especially for energy and housing.
New data from a wide range of nonpartisan experts confirm that clean energy investments are accomplishing both, fueling economic growth, lowering energy costs for families, adding new housing, and creating high-paying jobs.
The numbers also reveal just how much the Trump Administration and congressional Republicans would be taking away from the American people if they succeed in shutting down a clean energy program, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). The price tag for American consumers would be $52 billion in higher energy costs — a huge toll, especially when tariffs are already raising prices.
But that’s not all. Ending GGRF would also kill tens of thousands of jobs, hitting small businesses hardest. According to a recent study from Energy Innovation, the program would result in 36,000 to 41,000 additional jobs annually compared to current policies. Many of those jobs are expected to be in industries like home construction, HVAC installation, energy efficiency retrofits, manufacturing, solar installation, and other sectors dominated by small businesses.
The damage would also extend to housing costs. Business Insider reports that “tens of thousands of new apartments and houses…are now in danger of not being built” if the GGRF continues to be frozen, including in places experiencing booming population growth, like Texas. That means less housing supply to meet demand, which means continued increases in housing costs in constrained markets.
Everyday Americans and forgotten communities who benefit from these clean energy projects can’t afford to lose them just because their businesses, jobs, or lower energy bills don’t pass a partisan political litmus test. Ironically, it’s Republican House districts who would be hurt the most. Politico’s E&E News wrote last year: “EPA’s green bank could be a boon for red congressional districts.”
Some notable impacts that have been felt across the country since the freeze on these funds:
At stake is funding for projects across the United States meant to assist people like Ms. Oyola Pérez and reduce their energy costs while also cutting the pollution that is driving climate change. They range from efforts to add geothermal energy to affordable housing in Iowa to energy efficiency upgrades for a senior housing community in Massachusetts.
Nationwide, the federal program could finance enough new solar arrays to power up to 2.2 million homes by 2031, according to a recent analysis from Energy Innovation, a research organization, and the University of New Hampshire.
Millions of dollars in grants through the Environmental Protection Agency meant to go toward projects with the goal of cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions are now on pause.
They were scheduled to go to credit unions across the country to help people finance clean energy projects at home, like solar panels.
The Trump administration has frozen $250 million in grants to a nonprofit helping companies replace diesel trucks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, part of a broad federal effort to claw back $20 billion in green energy funding.
The program by Climate United, announced last October, would offer affordable leases for new electric heavy-duty trucks operated by small fleets and individual truckers serving the ports.
…The grant, which would have funded about 500 electric trucks, remains frozen by Citibank, which holds the funds, as a legal dispute plays out between the EPA, the bank and Climate United, a nonprofit based in Maryland.
One of Arkansas’s largest proposed solar projects is caught between Donald Trump and the federal courts, as Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency works to withhold renewable energy financing from major nonprofits.
The Arkansas project aims to supply solar energy to all University of Arkansas campuses, by installing arrays at 18 sites around the state. Scenic Hill Solar, a company led by former Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, partnered with the university and national renewable energy financing nonprofit Climate United to launch the project. The total cost will be over $100 million, and the former president of the UA System, Donald Bobbitt, said the university system expected to save $120 million over 25 years from the project’s energy cost savings. When complete, it’s expected to have 66 megawatts of clean electricity capacity.
In Minnesota, for example, the $25 million the Minnesota Climate Innovation Finance Authority was awarded from the federal program makes up about one-fifth of the capital Groth Swan is planning to go toward a host of projects.
They include making an old school that’s being turned into a workforce development site more energy efficient and putting solar and storage technology on schools in north Minneapolis to keep the lights on during severe weather, according to Groth Swan.
Her organization also plans to loan money to an ice hockey arena for a new electric cooling system so it can stop using a toxin the EPA wants ice rinks to get rid of, she said.
N.C. Clean Energy Fund’s planned projects include providing solar loans for individuals, a solar project serving a municipal water treatment plant, capital for energy efficiency services companies to expand and energy efficiency improvements for a small rural college, says co-director Melissa Malkin-Weber. The projects are for communities across the state, including in WNC.
The nonprofit also hopes to finance microgrid and solar battery and storage projects at community hubs that would help WNC become more resilient after a natural disaster, says Asheville-based Michelle Myers, program manager for the clean energy fund.
The Clean Power Information Project is a hub for the facts on how clean energy powers communities across the United States. https://