Van Hollen, Whitehouse Lead 30 Colleagues in Demanding EPA Obey the Law and Restore Solar for All, Other Green Bank Program Funding

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), led 30 of their Senate colleagues in demanding Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin obey the law and restore all previously obligated funding for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which includes Solar for All, the National Clean Investment Fund, and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator.

 

Despite the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s (OBBBA) unambiguous terms on “unobligated balances,” Administrator Zeldin has falsely claimed that rescissions also apply to obligated funding and has recently used that to justify illegally terminating $7 billion in previously obligated Solar for All investments. Under the Solar for All program, states, territories, Tribal governments, municipalities, and nonprofit organizations in all 50 states have already been obligated $7 billion for initiatives that lower household energy bills by expanding access to affordable solar energy. Across the country, energy officials are raising the alarm that the loss of Solar for All funding could undermine grid resilience, cost jobs, and increase household energy costs.

 

“When the proposed repeal and rescission of unobligated GGRF funds was initially proposed in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CBO scored the provision as saving $19 million, the remaining appropriated funding for EPA administration and oversight of the program,” wrote the Senators. “If the OBBBA had somehow clawed back GGRF money that the federal government had already obligated, that estimate would have been as much as $27 billion: $7 billion for Solar for All, $11.97 billion for the NCIF, and $8 billion for the CCIA. CBO confirmed, further, that repeal of the program language did not create any additional savings. The rescission and repeal together only saved $19 million.”

Even Republicans have made clear that already obligated funding is not subject to rescission in the OBBBA. During the markup of the Energy and Commerce Committee title for the House version of the bill, then-Chair of the Environment Subcommittee Morgan Griffith (VA-09) stated, “I just want to point out that these provisions that we are talking about only apply as far, as this bill is concerned, to the unobligated balances. So if a grant was already given, as far as this bill is concerned, then that would still be going forward …. If the grant has already been granted and the money is obligated, then this—then our language does not affect that… [W]e can’t rescind expenditures that have already been obligated.”

 

Mandy Gunasekara, EPA Chief of Staff in the first Trump administration and author of the EPA chapter in Project 2025, told a reporter that, “Once money is out the door, I don’t know of a way you can claw it back.”

 

“Despite [EPA’s] baseless attacks, the bottom line is that neither CBO nor Republicans understood the repeal and rescission of the GGRF to save anything more than EPA’s unspent oversight dollars. Wishful statutory interpretation on the part of EPA does not enable EPA to cancel lawfully obligated grants,” concluded the lawmakers.

 

In addition to Senators Van Hollen and Whitehouse, the letter was signed by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Angus King (I-Maine), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Tina Smith (D-Minn), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

 

The full letter is available here and below:

Dear Administrator Zeldin:

We write regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) continued efforts to illegally claw back billions of dollars in already-obligated clean energy funding from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). On July 3, 2025, EPA’s Department of Justice (DOJ) counsel represented to the D.C. Circuit that, once enacted, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) “would rescind the appropriated [GGRF] funds that plaintiffs sought to reinstate through this action.” Counsel for those GGRF grantees—who had received funding though the GGRF’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF) and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA)—countered this faulty representation in a letter filed with the court on July 7, 2025; one of the undersigned (and Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with jurisdiction over EPA) entered a statement into the Congressional Record on July 9, 2025, further rebutting this erroneous representation.

Unfortunately, EPA continues to make false claims that the OBBBA rescinded previously-obligated GGRF funding. On August 7, 2025, EPA announced that it was rescinding all grant funding issued under the GGRF’s Solar for All program, again improperly relying on the OBBBA as justification, and began sending termination letters to those grantees.

Section 60002 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reads as follows:

SEC. 60002. REPEAL OF GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTION FUND. Section 134 of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7434) is repealed and the unobligated balances of amounts made available to carry out that section (as in effect on the day before the date of enactment of this Act) are rescinded. 

By its express language, the OBBBA only rescinds “unobligated balances” under Clean Air Act Section 134. Section 134 had been enacted into law on August 16, 2022, as Section 60103 of the Inflation Reduction Act. Pub. L. 117-169, 136 Stat. 2065 (Aug. 16, 2022). That provision appropriated almost $27 billion (available only through September 30, 2024) for three grant programs, and directed EPA to begin making grants within 180 days of enactment. It then appropriated $30 million to EPA to administer these programs. EPA obligated all of the grant funds before September 30, 2024. For two of the grant programs (NCIF and CCIA), the funds were fully disbursed into private bank accounts before September 30, 2024. For Solar for All, 49 of the 60 grantees are state-level entities and six are Tribes. The largest state recipients include Texas (over $249 million), several states receiving over $156 million (among them North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Louisiana, and Missouri), West Virginia (over $106 million), South Carolina (over $124 million), and Alaska (over $62 million). All funds were obligated by August 2024 and are held at the Department of the Treasury for grantees to draw down. Recipients have so far utilized between $30 and $50 million, with drawdowns expected to have increased significantly this fall as grantees have now been able to fully design their programs, complete competitions for fund recipients, and overcome hurdles created by EPA’s earlier freeze. Some projects have already been completed thanks to the funding.

The strongest evidence for the status of those funds, aside from the plain text of the OBBBA, is the scoring of the OBBBA by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Lawmakers relied on CBO’s “score,” or the estimated cost or savings of each provision, to ensure the reconciliation bill met each Committee’s savings or spending instructions as set by the Budget Committees.

When the proposed repeal and rescission of unobligated GGRF funds was initially proposed in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CBO scored the provision as saving $19 million, the remaining appropriated funding for EPA administration and oversight of the program. (See Appendix A.) That does not include a penny of the three grant programs. If the OBBBA had somehow clawed back GGRF money that the federal government had already obligated, that estimate would have been as much as $27 billion: $7 billion for Solar for All, $11.97 billion for the NCIF, and $8 billion for the CCIA. CBO confirmed, further, that repeal of the program language did not create any additional savings. The rescission and repeal together only saved $19 million. At no point did the Majority dispute this score. 

Upon enactment, CBO made its final OBBBA budget estimates publicly available. This final estimate for Section 60002 confirms that repeal and rescission of the GGRF only saved the government $19 million—those dollars that EPA had been awarded for program administration and oversight. 

What’s more, numerous Republicans have made clear that it is not legally possible to claw back funding that has already been obligated. For instance: 

• During the House Energy & Commerce Committee mark-up of the OBBBA on May 13, 2025, Congressman Griffith (R-VA), then-Chair of the Environment Subcommittee, stated: “I just want to point out that these provisions that we are talking about only apply as far, as this bill is concerned, to the unobligated balances. So if a grant was already given, as far as this bill is concerned, then that would still be going forward. . . . If the grant has already been granted and the money is obligated, then this—then our language does not affect that… [W]e can’t rescind expenditures that have already been obligated.” 
• In June 2024, E&E News quoted Mandy Gunasekara, an EPA Chief of Staff in the first Trump administration and author of the EPA chapter in Project 2025, as saying of the GGRF funding, “Once money is out the door, I don’t know of a way you can claw it back.”

EPA’s attacks on Solar for All continue a pattern of false statements about GGRF, including defamatory accusations you have made that “the entire [GGRF] scheme, in my opinion, is criminal” and that GGRF was “all of the above” when asked if it was “either a kickback, a theft, or graft.” You have led the Trump Administration in waging an unprecedented assault on the NCIF and CCIA portions of the GGRF program, unlawfully weaponizing the federal government in an inexplicable exercise to wage allegations of fraud meant to trigger the narrow basis for terminating grants set forth in those grant agreements, even after:

• the criminal chief for the Washington, DC, United States Attorney’s Office quit over the incident; 
• a magistrate judge refused to issue a search warrant on the DC Acting United States Attorney’s baseless assertions; 
• at least one other United States Attorney’s Office refused to seek a warrant for the same bogus matter; 
• DOJ officials failed to find any meaningful evidence of criminality during their investigation; and
• DOJ attorneys backtracked on the fraud allegation in real time, when asked to explain the reason for freezing access to private bank accounts in a DC courtroom.

Despite these baseless attacks, the bottom line is that neither CBO nor Republicans understood the repeal and rescission of the GGRF to save anything more than EPA’s unspent oversight dollars. Wishful statutory interpretation on the part of EPA does not enable EPA to cancel lawfully obligated grants.

Your actions undermine thousands of projects that will deliver more affordable housing, community centers for refuge during extreme weather events, and clean energy to American communities. Your attempts to retroactively seize funding from grantees, and then to misrepresent the basis for your actions, are illegal. We urge you to reverse course and restore this important funding.

Sincerely,