The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it was ending a $7 billion solar energy grant program designed for low-income housing.
Describing the Trump EPA’s goal of “being a great steward” of taxpayer dollars, Administrator Lee Zeldin declared that the agency halted the Biden-era “Solar for All” agenda.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which included a $7 billion pot called ‘Solar for All,'” Zeldin announced on social media. “In some cases, your tax dollars were diluted through up to FOUR pass-through entities, each taking their own cut off the top! The bottom line is this: EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive.”
The Biden-era program, announced in 2024, was funded through the Inflation Reduction Act. “The 60 selections under the $7 billion Solar for All program will provide funds to states, territories, Tribal governments, municipalities, and nonprofits across the country to develop long-lasting solar programs that enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy and benefit from distributed residential solar, lowering energy costs for families, creating good-quality jobs in communities that have been left behind, advancing environmental justice and tackling climate change,” the Biden EPA explained at the time.
President Trump issued an executive order last month that criticized the federal government for forcing taxpayers to “subsidize expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar.”
“The proliferation of these projects displaces affordable, reliable, dispatchable domestic energy sources, compromises our electric grid, and denigrates the beauty of our Nation’s natural landscape,” the order said. Moreover, reliance on so-called ‘green’ subsidies threatens national security by making the United States dependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries. Ending the massive cost of taxpayer handouts to unreliable energy sources is vital to energy dominance, national security, economic growth, and the fiscal health of the Nation.”
