A solar panel in Roxbury. Massachusetts is slated to receive $156 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to build solar panels in low-income and disadvantaged communities in the state. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
Homes powered by solar panels. Children riding to school on electric school buses. Commuters in buses, trains, and electric vehicles.
The clean energy future envisioned under the Biden administration was backed by hundreds of billions in federal dollars. Now, as President Trump begins to implement his vision for America’s future — one that does not include wind turbines or electric vehicles — climate projects are in the crosshairs.
Throughout Tuesday, Massachusetts state agencies, towns, and nonprofits counting on huge amounts of federal climate money were in a panic after the White House attempted to pause a massive swath of federal aid, grants, and loans.
By late Tuesday afternoon, the chaos briefly subsided when a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze.
On Wednesday, the White House Office of Management and Budget rescinded its memo that had ordered the freeze. Then, administration officials said the freeze was not rescinded, pointing to Trump’s executive orders that had directed agencies to pause specific areas of grant funding (including for green energy).
The dizzying messages took a toll.
For example, the staff of Chelsea-based nonprofit GreenRoots started Tuesday morning talking about buying materials for 14 new community garden beds they’d planned to build this spring. Just a few hours later, executive director Roseann Bongiovanni got an email from the US Department of Agriculture: Funding for the gardens was paused. Bongiovanni directed her staff to stop their work on the project.
“I assume, because we have a federally recognized contract, that eventually we will get that funding,” Bongiovanni said. Still, she said, “I’m not counting on it.”
GreenRoots was also owed part of an Environmental Protection Agency grant for which it had already completed the work. The pause on funds made Bongiovanni fear that GreenRoots wouldn’t get paid, so she quickly logged into the portal on Tuesday and drew down the remaining $12,000.
“Every day is a new challenge, and a new set of crisis and chaos,” she said.
During the Biden administration, Massachusetts entities had won at least $4.9 billion in competitive energy, climate, infrastructure, and environment grants, according to a Globe analysis of public announcements and state data. (And, billions more are slated to come to the Commonwealth as routine formula funding, which greatly increased under President Biden.)Despite the sudden reversal by the administration, the future of federally funded climate projects remains murky: Will the new administration try to reverse contracts that states, cities, nonprofits, and others signed to do climate work?
“It’s obvious that it’s going to slow us down,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. “We will have a transition away from fossil fuels, but this is just obviously a major obstacle and a major impediment.”
Local environmental nonprofits are particularly worried. Emily Norton, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association, said her organization has nearly $300,000 in federal funds at risk. The money is for climate projects to increase the resilience of the watershed to heat, drought, and flooding.
During the Biden administration, Congress passed massive spending bills with the goal of transforming the nation’s economy from one that relies on climate-warming fossil fuels to one that is primarily powered by clean energy sources. Trump has said he wants to block that green energy money, but doing so would infringe on Congress' power, Democrats have said.
“Congress controls the purse strings,” said state Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell during a Tuesday press conference announcing a lawsuit against the administration. “[The Trump administration] cannot decide to halt funding just because they don’t like the way Congress decides to spend it.”
Large federal climate grants slated for Massachusetts include $389 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to modernize and make power grids in New England more resilient, $156 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to build solar panels in low-income and disadvantaged communities in the state, and $35 million, also from that law, to purchase electric school buses in Boston.
Boston city officials have repeatedly said that they believe signed contracts with federal agencies will hold up under the Trump administration.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said on Tuesday that the city has already signed contracts for — but not received — tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure, transportation, and climate grants. Federal grants typically work through reimbursement: The city purchases or completes the work and then is paid back by the federal government.
“We worked very closely to get [the grants] into contract form so that they would be codified in those legal documents,” Wu said. “The city is on solid footing right now, given the work that’s been put in to codify the discretionary grants that have been awarded.”
While it’s unclear which climate projects will ultimately be at risk, what is clear is that green energy is a primary target for Trump’s cuts.
Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, wrote in the Monday evening memo to federal agencies that using federal resources to advance “green new deal social engineering policies” is a “waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”
There is no law by the name of the “Green New Deal.” Rather, it was an idea for a legislative package to accelerate climate action proposed by Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2019.
Trump, however, has repeatedly used the phrase when he appears to be referring to climate spending packages passed under Biden. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify what programs are meant by the “green new deal social engineering policies.”
The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law each directed billions of dollars across the country to strengthen bridges, roads, water systems, and more for a warming climate while also directing low-cost loans and grants to clean sources of energy, electric vehicles, and other technologies that can mitigate climate change.
Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts pointed out that the majority of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act has gone toward Republican districts, suggesting that there ought to be bipartisan support in Congress for opposing the Trump administration’s attempts to slash climate funds.
“Congress passed this funding,” Markey wrote in a statement on the social media platform X. “It’s not Trump’s to stop on a whim. This is a violation of the law and basic decency.”
The administration’s moves this week will almost certainly chill the nation’s enthusiasm for a clean energy transition, climate advocates said.
Many communities, towns, businesses, and nonprofits may decide to “wait for the dust to settle” to figure out whether to purchase electric vehicles, install heat pumps, or buy solar panels, for example, said Anna Vanderspek, electric vehicle program director for the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
“The uncertainty and the churn around the pause will slow us down,” Vanderspek said. “The dust–” she said, “I don’t know if it’s going to settle.”
Emma Platoff contributed reporting.
Erin Douglas can be reached at erin.douglas@globe.com. Follow her @erinmdouglas23.