The Biden-Harris administration has faced criticism for providing $41 billion to fund nonprofits that “spread a radical, left-wing ideology” to eliminate fossil fuels.
A new report condemned the White House for subsidizing a shift to green energy technology “that relies on supply chains dominated by the Chinese Communist Party,” although financial analysts who study the US energy sector dispute those claims.
THe Delaware Valley Citizens Council for Clean Air received funding to phase out fracking and make “cycling, walking, public transit and electric vehicles the primary” sources of transportation – a plan that emphasizes the need for green energy.
Another $10 million was awarded to West Harlem Environmental Action, Incorporated (WE ACT), which called for a halt to new natural gas operations to continue the “fight against the counterfeit infrastructure infrastructure.”
“Simply put, the EPA allocates taxpayer dollars to special interest groups committed to a radical energy agenda to ‘educate’ others,” House Republicans said.
The Biden-Harris administration has been criticized for giving $41 billion to nonprofits that “spread a radical, left-wing ideology” to eliminate fossil fuels
While the US currently produces a third of its solar panels domestically, the country faces stiff competition from China – which produces about 98 percent of the world’s solar wafers, driving down prices of the technology globally.
Today, the US under Biden is imposing a 39 percent tariff on all such solar energy components imported from China.
But the US energy sector is nevertheless importing solar cells, wafers and polysilicon from the Asian country, totaling $12 billion in 2023 from China and its main export centers in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, according to Reuters.
Republicans who oversee the House Energy and Commerce Committee, focused on what they called a lack of oversight within the EPA to ensure that $41.5 billion in nonprofit grants funded by Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) were used appropriately.
In a public statementCommittee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said, “It couldn’t be clearer: the Biden-Harris administration is rewarding its special environmental interests at the expense of the American people.”
“Just as alarming,” Representative Rodgers noted in the joint statement, “is how these policies benefit the Chinese Communist Party – the world’s largest polluter.”
About $2.8 billion managed by the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR) was a specific spending issue in the report.
While the US currently produces a third of its solar panels domestically, the country faces stiff competition from China – which produces 98 percent of the world’s solar wafers, according to Reuters. Today, the US imposes a 39 percent tariff on solar energy components imported from China
The $41.5 billion in EPA grants marks a dramatic increase in the environmental watchdog’s ability to replace nonprofits in its mission.
Another was given $50 million the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) that focuses on the “social, racial, economic and environmental justice issues of climate change,” according to its website.
CJA’s work under the EPA grant system includes: MOREa project to reduce climate change with mirrors on land that reflect light directly back into space, and Rust band harvest‘harvests and distributes surplus urban fruits and vegetables in Buffalo, NY.’
“The influx of new funding and the explosion of new programming discussed above will burden EPA’s oversight and financial awards oversight,” the committee report argued.
But while lawmakers worried that the EPA would “use taxpayer dollars to promote Biden and Harris’ radical energy agenda,” their report provided few details for oversight.
“The EPA should closely monitor the use of the funding, not only by selected participants, but also by partner organizations and subrecipients to minimize the potential for misuse of these grants,” the 38-page report said.
IRA According to the report, spending on these nonprofits “will not only impact U.S. national security, but will also eliminate affordable and reliable energy sources – including oil, gas and coal.”
And yet, as of August 2024, according to MIT and the Rhodium Group, a total of $89 billion from the IRA — more than double the $41 billion proposed for EPA grants to “progressive” nonprofits — has already been spent on U.S. manufacturing -investments.
In addition to the EPA grants, more than $200 billion has been earmarked for investments in domestic green technology factories and manufacturing in the US – almost 500 percent more than the money spent on these nonprofits – as part of Biden’s 2022 IRA.
A brand new $1.9 billion electric vehicle battery factory announced last January for Marshall County, Mississippi, was hailed by Republican Senator Neil Whaley as “truly life-changing for voters.”
Mississippi’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, also applauded the project. CNBC reports thisnoting that it was the second largest capital investment in the state’s history.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Rhodium found that financing for domestic manufacturing in rural communities across the US has exploded to levels “unprecedented in recent history,” “thanks in large part to new clean energy manufacturing facilities”
Some conservative voters appear to have criticized the new report, slamming the House Energy Committee for being Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) and promising too little, too late to change Biden’s IRA spending priorities (above)
All told, the remaining $111 billion or more of the IRA’s planned $200 billion in domestic “green” manufacturing investments is expected to create 195,000 jobs, plus “economic multiplier effects” for local businesses, based on how those new recruited rural workers spend their wages.
“The amount of new manufacturing activity we’re seeing now is unprecedented in recent history,” said MIT affiliate Trevor Houser.
Houser noted that this boom in domestic manufacturing is “due in large part to new clean energy manufacturing facilities,” a claim supported by MIT’s research this year.
Houser, an economist, noted that some IRA efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing could resist any efforts to cut planned future IRA spending, whether it promotes “radical” nonprofits or corporations.
Above: Current President Joe Biden walks past solar panels during a tour of the Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative in Plymouth, New Hampshire in 2020 while running for office
“The more mature technologies, like wind and solar, electric vehicles, have reached breakout velocity,” Houser said.
“They will continue to grow no matter what,” he told CNBC. “It’s a matter of speed.”
“Politicians enjoy a certain luxury that can be rhetorically opposed to something, while still quietly welcoming all the dollars and jobs it brings to their constituents,” noted energy and resources sector analyst Jeffrey Davies.
Davies, now the founder of what he describes as data-driven energy new publication EnerWrap, wrote in a co-reported Bloomberg piece that these competing pressures may come to a head in a new Republican-controlled political climate in Washington DC.
“Looking ahead to November, if Republicans gain so much power that they can actually vote those dollars away,” Davies and his co-authors noted, “it would present a much more difficult dilemma – and a moment of truth.”
Still, the $41.5 billion in EPA grants marks a dramatic increase in the environmental watchdog’s ability to replace nonprofits in its mission.