Myths vs. Facts: The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF)
Even with prices rising and job creation down, the Trump Administration is taking actions that have been rebuffed by judges and even their own prosecutors that will increase energy, housing, and transportation costs while killing American jobs and private sector investment.
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is a catalytic financing program that will inject billions of dollars in local economic development projects to lower energy prices, grow U.S. energy production, and create jobs in communities across America. GGRF investments are being made locally by the people who understand their communities best, including local community lenders like credit unions, community development financial institutions, and nonprofit and state infrastructure banks.
Despite the local benefits of lowering energy costs in communities across the country, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Elon Musk, and the Trump Department of Justice are attempting to claw back funding for these grants that has already been issued, defying the law and trying to break legal contracts. Despite having no coherent rationale, and despite the program having been called “a boon for red congressional districts,” they have left workers, families, customers, small businesses, and local community lenders in limbo.
The Trump Administration’s public attacks, manufactured as a rationale for clawing back the funds, have been debunked by a growing number of independent, nonpartisan fact checkers, and went unsubstantiated when a court asked them to produce evidence of actual waste, fraud, or abuse. As the judge put it: “You have to have some kind of evidence” to cancel grants passed by Congress and established by law.
Independent experts agree, however, that the EPA’s process of lobbing accusations without evidence, and their attempt to gin up political investigations at the Justice Department, is indeed an abuse.
For example, a senior, 24-year, nonpartisan prosecutor at the Department of Justice – who led the criminal division that the Trump Administration pressured to be an accomplice in their unsubstantiated campaign – refused and resigned. What’s more, when the DOJ tried to get a warrant based on the baseless lies they’ve been telling, a magistrate judge shut them down.
Ahead of an imminent court ruling on Trump’s unjustified freeze of GGRF funds, EPA announced that it would terminate $20 billion of GGRF awards — escalating its evidence-free attack on the program and its awardees. This, too, was shot down by a federal judge.
Democrats on U.S. Senate and U.S. House committees have opened investigations into the Trump Administration’s overreach and abuse of power.
Below is a breakdown of the misleading claims the administration has made as part of this lawless campaign.
MYTH: GGRF is evidence of the Biden Administration “tossing gold bars off the Titanic.”
FACT: The “gold bars” analogy comes from out-of-context remarks in a video made of a former federal employee by right-wing Project Veritas, a group that has long been discredited for manipulating information. Mark Zaid, the lawyer for the former employee in question, said his client was “the victim of a Project Veritas attack” and NOT referring to the frozen GGRF funds. “He is the one who made that ‘gold bars’ statement that Zeldin keeps seizing on, but it has nothing to do with this Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” Mr. Zaid said. “He wasn’t talking about that. Those funds were already allocated and obligated.”
MYTH: The process was rushed in the closing days of the Biden Administration, and was influenced by Trump winning the 2024 election.
FACT: As independent fact checkers have repeatedly confirmed, this process was comprehensive, transparent, and took nearly two years. The EPA’s own website proves it and includes receipts.
- August 2022: Inflation Reduction Act passed
- October 2022: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) opens first 45-day public comment period
- April 2023: EPA releases Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program framework
- May 2023: EPA opens second public comment period
- July 2023: Notices of Funding Opportunity released
- October 2023: Applications due
- April 2024: Awards announced
- August 2024: Contracts signed and implementation commenced
- October 2024: Awardee announced the first project, in Arkansas – a solar investment that will save the University of Arkansas a total $120 million in energy costs
As The Washington Post Fact Checker wrote, “the funding of this money was transparent and can be seen in documents available on the EPA website.” And “the money was delivered nine months before President Joe Biden left office, not at the last moment.”
MYTH: The program has experienced fraud, waste, abuse, and self-dealing.
FACT: The GGRF program has strict and transparent guidelines in their award agreements, and the EPA has not even alleged that the grantees have violated them.
This includes requirements for spending, regular reporting, audits, risk management, and oversight at both project and portfolio levels.
Despite false claims of fraud and abuse leveled at awardees by EPA political appointees, the EPA proferred no evidence of it in court when called to do so by a federal judge.
On February 18, a senior prosecutor at the Department of Justice resigned rather than send a letter ordering the freeze of Citibank grantees’ accounts, stating in her resignation message: “I still do not believe that there is sufficient… evidence to tell the bank that there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified.”
MYTH: Stacey Abrams made money from the GGRF.
FACT: That is totally false and multiple nonpartisan fact checkers have debunked it, including at The Washington Post and PolitiFact.
Abrams temporarily advised Rewiring America, a nonprofit that is just one member of one of the multiple coalitions that received a grant, and was not involved with the grant process. Nor did she make any money from it.
The Washington Post showed that “Abrams became a senior counsel for Rewiring America, a consortium member that aims to convert homes from fossil fuels to electricity. But even that’s a stretch, as she was not involved with Power Forward’s EPA grant. Moreover, her contract with the group ended in December [2024].”
And the CEO of that coalition said, “Stacey Abrams has not received a penny of this EPA grant. It was never the plan for her to receive any money from this grant.”
MYTH: There is no harm to freezing funds because no projects are underway.
FACT: Freezing these funds is already threatening to kill American jobs and prevent the creation of many more.
It’s also delaying reductions in energy, housing, and transportation costs – including in congressional districts represented by Republicans.
This spending has been appropriated by Congress, the U.S. government has signed contracts with the grantees, and investments were already flowing to local businesses, community organizations, and working families around the country.
For example, the nonprofit grantee EPA Administrator Zeldin name-checked in his initial political attacks, Climate United, invested $32 million to support their major clean energy project in Arkansas that will lower costs and create jobs across the state.
Inclusiv recently announced that 108 credit unions and Puerto Rican cooperatives would receive a combined $651 million in its first round of CCIA awards, collectively serving more than 4.9 million Americans in 27 states and Puerto Rico and generating a projected $2 billion in new lending capital to finance cost-saving energy efficiency retrofits and local energy projects.
Power Forward Communities announced $539 million in investments to “expand and preserve affordable housing, improve air quality, and create good-paying jobs by ramping up simple energy efficiency and other improvements in single-family and multifamily homes nationwide.” The coalition intends to improve or build 11,000 multifamily and 61,000 single-family homes, spur 64,000 jobs and curb energy bills $1.26 billion over the seven-year grant period.
Green Bank for Rural America recently announced an unprecedented $240 million in funding requests from community lenders in the first months after opening applications. These investments will also support job creation, small business growth and wealth-building for families, and infrastructure and transportation development in rural communities – expediting funding requests received from community lenders who are serving areas hardest hit by the devastation of Hurricane Helene in fall 2024.
A breakdown on state-by-state impacts for announced investments is here.
MYTH: The Trump Administration is doing standard due-diligence to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.
FACT: The Trump administration’s EPA and DOJ have been so insistent on claiming guilt without evidence that, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. resigned after she refused an order to freeze $20 billion from the fund held in grantees’ accounts at Citibank, saying she lacked the legal authority to do so.
The Washington Post characterized Stefan D. Cassella, an expert in asset forfeiture law, as calling this an “extraordinary and probably unprecedented” effort to “freeze accounts without adequate evidence or legal basis” and “a misuse of the Justice Department’s powers of criminal investigation.”
The Washington Post story detailed how the DOJ has taken “unusual steps” to investigate these funds, which are held at Citibank through a financial agency agreement established by the Department of the Treasury. According to the Post, on February 18th, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. – a veteran prosecutor – resigned after facing political pressure to freeze the funds without sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to justify such an action.
“To seize bank accounts without probable cause would be illegal” and “a misuse of asset forfeiture laws,” Cassella said. “That’s why prosecutors in D.C. responsibly refused to do it.”
Interim U.S. attorney Ed Martin then personally submitted a warrant application to retain the funds from Citibank without working with any other prosecutors in his office. That request was rejected by a U.S. magistrate judge, who found that the request failed to show sufficient proof that a crime may have occurred.
Around that same time, the Acting Deputy Attorney General’s office asked at least one other U.S. attorney’s office to launch a grand jury investigation and freeze the funds at Citibank. Once again, federal prosecutors denied the warrant request due to insufficient evidence.
Newsweek writes, “David Super is a professor at Georgetown Law, where his research focuses on administrative law, constitutional law and legislation. Super told Newsweek that the EPA’s attempt to claw back the GGRF money is “strikingly illegal.”
“They’re simply using the word ‘fraud’ as a political epithet but have no evidence of any wrongdoing,” Super said, adding “There’s a danger that prosecutors will be pressured into putting together false investigations and false charges to back up the politics.”
MYTH: The arrangement with Citibank is designed to limit oversight.
FACT: Financial agent agreements have been used by the federal government under both Republican and Democratic administrations for over a century.
In a 2017 report, the Government Accountability Office said the Treasury has “a long history of using financial agents to support its core functions”.
EPA designed the GGRF – and structured the agreement with Citibank – to maintain extensive agency oversight and prevent misuse of taxpayer dollars. If the agency found evidence of malfeasance, it could directly and immediately address such concerns on a case-by-case basis. However, baseless allegations of “waste, fraud, and abuse” are no reason to undermine an entire program that promises to lower energy costs for millions of hardworking Americans.
EPA retains real-time visibility into transaction-level data, and requires regular reporting in the grant agreement.
Without this arrangement, grantees would be unable to maximize and catalyze private sector co-investment, actually undermining the reach and impact of the tax dollars.
MYTH: GGRF funds were “unknown” and “hidden” as part of a secret agenda
FACT: Three GGRF programs – Solar for All, the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA) were established by Congress as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed in 2022.
The GGRF award process was conducted in a robust, consistent, and transparent manner, was widely reported in the media, and is well documented on the EPA website.
GGRF awardees underwent an extensive, multi-stage review and selection process that included multiple review panels of federal government employees from across agencies.
Selectees were notified in April 2024, and funds were awarded in August, 2024, two years after the IRA was passed, and well before the November elections.
Detailed awardee work plans and strategies are public documents and were posted on the EPA’s website in August 2024 and remain available here:
MYTH: These funds were illegally distributed by politically-motivated individuals in a “rush job” rife with corruption and fraud.
FACT: GGRF awardees underwent an extensive, multi-stage review and selection process. This included multiple expert review panels of career federal government employees from across agencies, including EPA, DOE, USDA, and others, along with National Labs.
EPA reviewed and approved thousands of pages of policies that govern awardees’ investment process, financial management, governance, and program compliance practices, among many others.
Senior EPA officials then interviewed awardees’ leadership teams for NCIF and CCIA applicants, and a final team of senior federal employees provided unanimous recommendations to the EPA Selection Official(s), who then made funding decisions.
MYTH: GGRF funds are a misuse/waste of taxpayer dollars
FACT: The National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator efficiently and effectively remove financial barriers to clean technologies so every American can benefit from good-paying jobs, lower energy bills, and better public health.
These programs were explicitly designed to mobilize private capital alongside public funds – $7 of private capital for every $1 of federal funds – and to fill market gaps, providing a demand pull for clean energy technology development and domestic manufacturing.
MYTH: GGRF programs are handouts to “far-left” groups and Democrat-aligned organizations
FACT: NCIF and CCIA awardees collectively have hundreds of years of experience, and encompass non-partisan community lenders and credit unions, impact investors, and large community-serving organizations.
From Arkansas to Alaska, GGRF awardees are making local investments that lower energy costs, create jobs, and reduce pollution in all 50 states and territories.
MYTH: Awardees are brand new pop-up organizations that have never handled this volume of funds before
FACT: In the July 2023 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for NCIF, EPA explicitly offered the option for applicants to submit coalition applications, with requirements that all terms, conditions, oversight, and reporting requirements flow down to coalition members. All three NCIF awardees are coalitions: Climate United, Power Forward Communities, and the Coalition for Green Capital.
Climate United comprises three coalition partners – Calvert Impact, Community Preservation Corporation, and Self-Help Ventures Fund– that have a combined 110 years of experience managing more than $30 billion private and institutional capital that is unlocking economic opportunity for communities in all 50 states and territories.
The Power Forward Communities coalition was established by some of America’s most trusted organizations: United Way Worldwide, Habitat for Humanity International, Enterprise Community Partners, Rewiring America, and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. They have deep housing and finance expertise and decades of collective experience building healthy, resilient, affordable communities and homes. Faced with the necessary prospect of having to sue the federal government for access to their own funds after the Trump EPA’s lawless actions, United Way and Habitat decided they had to leave the coalition.
The Coalition for Green Capital has built a coalition that includes 18 experienced organizations, including 16 well-established state and local
green banks and two national nonprofit organizations. These coalition members have extensive track records of catalyzing private capital investments across the country, as well as billions
of dollars in financial assets collectively under management.
MYTH: One of the groups had only managed $100 before receiving an award.
FACT: The organizations being attacked have collectively deployed or invested over $100 billion in community-based housing, health, environmental, and economic development initiatives and created or preserved over 1.4 million affordable housing units. The $100 figure reflects the fact that the coalitions were newly formed to implement the grants, but the partner organizations making up the coalitions were amongst the most well-established non-profits in the country.
MYTH: Clean energy spending limits consumer choice and makes energy more expensive
FACT: By expanding access to clean energy and unleashing American entrepreneurship and manufacturing, GGRF awardees are providing consumers and small business owners with more choices for how to power their homes, vehicles, and workplaces.
NCIF and CCIA awardees use public-private partnerships to remove financial barriers to deploying clean energy and energy efficiency, lowering costs for American households and businesses.
MYTH: These federal dollars are killing jobs.
FACT: NCIF and CCIA projects are built by American businesses creating American jobs at every stage—from manufacturing to installation to ongoing maintenance. The end result? A thriving clean energy economy that lowers energy costs, improves public health, and expands economic opportunities in communities nationwide.