1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
- The only exception was the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, otherwise known as the Green Bank program. Unfortunately, that money pot was one of the few frozen grant programs most relevant to the commercial and utility-scale renewables sector.Senators are asking questions about this, but no lawsuits yet.
- Meanwhile it appears the Agriculture Department is still holding onto money for renewables development under the Rural Energy for America Program.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
- Johnson had said last year he wanted to take a “scalpel” to the IRA, emphasizing a surgical approach amid pushback from more moderate members of his caucus. But yesterday he told reporters on the Hill that any attempt at repeal will “be somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.”
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.
- Undoing the endangerment finding would legally be quite tricky but has the capacity to upend the marketplace’s confidence in almost two decades of energy and air pollution regulation that has proven a tailwind for renewables.
