President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making plans to rapidly invest billions of dollars in green energy and technology projects before the money must be returned to Congress in just over a year, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is one of several funding opportunities for green projects established by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that Democrats are hoping to fully spend before Republicans have a chance to take back control of Congress, the Post reported.
The GGRF is unique, however, because the IRA mandates it fully disburse its funding by September 30, 2024, a move by Democrats to shield the program from GOP efforts to recover the funds, an anonymous Democratic aide told the outlet.
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“We did craft it with the motivation to have EPA stand up the program quickly to save it from the risk of potential future repeal efforts,” the aide said, according to the Post. Democratic Sen. Thomas Carper of Delaware, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said that he had instructed the EPA to “waste no time” on disbursing the funds because “we are running out of time” to combat climate change, the Post reported.
Republicans have criticized the fund in the past, questioning whether the EPA’s investments in green energy would benefit American consumers, the Post reported.
The fund “allocates an incredible amount of authority and resources” without sufficient accountability or transparency, Sean Kelly, a spokesman for the GOP arm of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told the Post. “In other words, this provision creates a taxpayer-funded slush fund for Wall Street and heightens the risk for overspending, fraud and abuse.”
The EPA launched the first $7 billion in funding from the green bank last week via the Solar for All grant competition, which will fund solar projects in low-income communities, according to an agency press release.
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The agency expects to announce two additional grant competitions in the coming weeks, a $14 billion competition to finance the deployment of green technology nationwide and a $6 billion competition to help local lenders finance green projects.
The agency “is confident we will obligate funds for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund before the September 30, 2024 statutory deadline,” EPA spokesman Tim Carroll told the Post.
The EPA did not immediately provide comment for this story.
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