Frozen Federal Funding Wreaks Havoc On Key R.I. Climate Initiatives
By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff—
Specifically, funds awarded to state agencies from the
Inflation Reduction Act, or the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, are
inaccessible to the state Department of Environmental Management and the Office
of Energy Resources.
At OER, at least $125 million in federal funds are frozen
and unavailable. State energy officials quietly announced last week on
the OER website that some of its programs
would be temporarily halted due to recent executive orders issued by President
Donald Trump.
In a statement posted on the social media website Bluesky,
Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., denounced the continued freeze on federal dollars.
“This could mean higher energy costs, a dirtier environment and fewer jobs for
RIers,” Magaziner wrote.
Impacted programs at OER include the Solar for All program,
funded by a nearly $50 million grant to overcome barriers to solar panel
adoption in Rhode Island’s low-income communities, and phase two of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI)
program.
The NEVI program, which gave OER $23 million in federal
funds over a five-year period, is aimed at boosting the state’s electric
vehicle infrastructure. Rhode Island had been a leader in the program, becoming
the first state to reach its second phase, which provides up to 80% of federal
matching dollars for private entities and companies to install electric vehicle
charging stations on their property.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts had barely launched its program or
spent any of the funding allocated to it by federal officials.
Rhode Island also received $31 million in IRA funding for
the home electrification and appliance rebate program, which allows homeowners
to collect rebates on energy-efficient appliances.
OER did not return inquiries from ecoRI News for this story.
“I think the federal government is putting states in a
really uncomfortable position of just complete chaos,” said Anna Vanderspek,
electric vehicle program director for the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, speaking
on the impact to NEVI. “Everybody is confused. More broadly, so many of the
executive orders on climate and environmental justice are going to end up in
the courts.”
Continued confusion at the federal level or even just
continued frozen funding will result in delays in southern New England’s
vehicle transition, Vanderspek said, and the region will have difficulty
meeting its climate goals. The NEVI program was designed to spread awareness of
the need for electric vehicle charging stations, a key hurdle to widespread
adoption.
“We had momentum,” said Vanderspek about the transition to
EVs. “Both Massachusetts and Rhode Island had adopted the Advanced Clean Cars
regulations, unless the new administration takes California’s waiver away, to
have emission standards that push the industry to provide more EV options in
our states, and make sure an increasing percentage of vehicles sold are EVs.”
Now even the waiver given to California by the federal
government, which allows that state to create stricter emission standards for
cars sold in its state, is in danger. If the Trump administration succeeds in
stripping California of its waiver, Rhode Island’s phaseout of gas-powered car
sales will go along with it.
“Any delay means more harm to communities in Rhode Island
and all around the world,” Vanderspek said. “It’s really clear that, and we’ve
been saying it for, I don’t know how many decades, that we don’t have any more
time to waste.”
Elsewhere In the state government, DEM officials are also
feeling the federal freeze. At least 25% of DEM’s budget comes from federal
funds, including IRA, IIJA, and Environmental Protection Agency grants, all of
which could be impacted. So far, the department has only identified grants for
local farmers to improve access to local produce and improve food access to
low-income residents as being impacted.
Likely impacted is the state’s climate pollution reduction grant. Rhode
Island had received a $3 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency
for climate planning processes. Both have been listed in a state lawsuit has
possibly being impacted by the freeze.
DEM officials declined to give a number on how much
department money was impacted by the freeze, noting that the situation was
changing daily.
It’s the second week of financial chaos for state agencies.
Rhode Island, despite its small size, was a big recipient of a number of IRA
and IIJA grants. In 2023 ecoRI News identified at
least $800 million in federal dollars flowing into the Ocean State for
environmental initiatives as part of the two federal laws, not including the
money the state’s Department of Transportation received for road, bridge, and
highway projects. The actual number received by Rhode Island agencies,
municipalities, and nonprofits is likely much higher.
The chaos has only sharpened now that Trump ally Elon Musk
and his employees have been allowed into the parts of the Treasury Department
that authorize many of the payments made by the federal government. It’s also
been compounded by the fact that the illegal freezes have continued despite a
pair of restraining orders on the actions from two different federal judges.
Much of the current freeze stems from a quirk of how the
government accesses federal funds. The federal government doesn’t write the
state agency a check, it puts the money in an account owned by the Treasury
Department, and the agency is allowed to draw it down at will, typically over
the length of the grant.
On Friday, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha
announced his office, together with attorneys general from 23 other states,
they were filing a motion of enforcement to get the freeze lifted, citing
evidence of ongoing disruptions to disbursements to states, and federal funds
still blocked from the IRA and IIJA despite previous restraining orders.
“As long as this Administration continues to break the law,
we will continue our fight to uphold it,” said Neronha in the Feb. 7 statement.
“When Judge McConnell granted our TRO last Friday, he ordered the resumption of
all federal funding that had been previously severed by the Administration’s
new OMB policy. And yet, since then, states and federal funding recipients
across the country have reported trouble accessing their congressionally
allocated funds. These lingering funding pauses are not coincidental.”
Neronha’s Friday push has proven successful — so far. A
district judge issued a new order to the federal government ordering them to
unlock any frozen money. As of Monday afternoon, it is not apparent if they
have done so.
